NSDF: Never Enough and Return to the Silence

Physical Theatre makes my head hurt. A lot. Thinking about it… Writing about it… How do you reconcile this semantically flaccid term, used to describe the work of everyone from DV8 to Shared Experience? How do you produce a piece of so-called Physical Theatre that doesn’t inspire unimaginative jokes about poncing about and pretending to be trees?

Some reasons for my physical theatre-induced migraines are illuminated by Manchester-based sketch troupe Lady Garden. These six female performers never fail to make me giggle with their unabashed lampoonery of embarrassing student fantasies of self-expression. Their opening skit sees the Lady-Gardeners slither on stage in tight, black leotards, trailing red ribbons behind them and crying out such inanities as “Ejaculation” in their best “I trained at RADA” voices. Yet despite this cautionary tale, the lure of the physical for student practitioners is palpable at the NSDF. So I will persist, headache be damned. 

A trio of incredibly bendy performers from the University of Hull did their level best to challenge perceptions of physical theatre this week. Never Enough, a devised tale of fear and self-loathing, manages to arabesque its way through a myriad of cultural references that attack the heart of a postmodern consumer society. Its three characters, thrown together by a narrative reminiscent of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal, show the audience that no amount of shopping and fucking can ever be enough. Rothko-inspired paintings hang at the back of the stage, their vivid colours cheapened by the contrasting black box-space; IKEA imitations of fine art. At the fateful dinner party held by Rebecca (played impeccably by a tightly-wound Helen Goalen) tinny jazz music is piped in. Later, Lizzi (Abbi Greenland) comments that listening to jazz makes her feel “posh”— more than a nod in the direction of Adorno & Horkheimer’s theories of cultural commoditisation. Even the vision of domestic bliss voiced by Will (Marc Graham) is constructed from fantasies of what he would buy. Evidently, RashDash productions’ thematic concept is as tight as their choreography (and Lady Garden’s lycra).

The second pleasant surprise in Never Enough is the frequent deference to comedy. Much has been made of the glorious dancing cup-cake (Helen Goalen again, with unwavering conviction) and it is interludes like this, which lend the show energy when the script falters.

A similar dose of irreverence wouldn’t go amiss in Curious Directive’s Return to the Silence. A clinical piece, in more ways than one, Return to the Silence use movement, multi-media, some chords lifted from a Coldplay album and “unconventional seating” to tell the tale of a neurologist who suffers a stroke.  Amid a visual and aural cacophony designed to mimic the many functions of the human brain Curious Directive’s large chorus wheel several small seating banks back and forth through the auditorium. When they say this production will move you, they mean it. Literally.

Whether you will be affected by Return to the Silence is less certain. The parade of neurological disorders in the show is distinctly sterile and staid. Especially, when you consider that the narrating neurologist is supposed to have gained new insight into what it means to have your head fucked. Sadly, the crashing, sentimental piano music is no substitute for emotional interrogation. The devised dialogue falls flat on more than one occasion and repeats clinical information that has already been projected for us via the film screens at either end of the theatre.

So half-way through the week and half-way through a packet of Nurofen, what can be concluded about physical theatre at the NSDF? It probably amounts to more than Bacchae-inspired baked goods and swivelling seating. But I can’t be sure. I would hazard that it might boil down to whether or not getting physical actually serves your story. Try and do it without the maudlin facial expressions.  And that a balletic prance when moving a piece of scenery is always unnecessary.  

NSDF: Absolutely Bang On

Clive Judd’s Herons starts with a bang. Literally. Fragile looking teenager Billy Russell (Simon Longman) — huddled inside a navy blue hoody— holds two fingers out to the audience. “Bang.” Blackout.

Simon Longman and Mark Weinman

 

 

Troubled teens are well-trodden territory for stage and screen. In a post-Skins age the mouthy, over-sexualised ‘kidult’ is made a cipher for our grubbiest urges. Not so in Herons.

In this play, where it is near impossible to discern the join between acting and directing, the teenage residents of an East London estate are painfully well observed.  Not for us the furtive gropes and snogs of teenage lust.

Instead, Herons is stark and sharp like a broken bottle. Its characters rarely touch except to threaten or strike one another.  And these gaping emotional voids are echoed by the sparse set; just bricks, discarded beer bottles and acres of black wall.

The performances are taut and polished. Edward Franklin portrays vengeful bully Scott Cooper with unnerving conviction. Franklin is hypnotic as he torments Billy; he is coiled like a viper ready to strike, with the occasional jerk and unblinking stare hinting at the violence to come.     

Occasionally the staging is slack. Several long dualogues veer from understated to catatonic. But, that said, stillness is important to the piece.  The cast do not shy away from pauses and silence, letting their own beautifully played intentions and subtexts speak for their selves. Even playwright Simon Stephens, upon seeing the show, commented that he felt he’d given the actors too many words. Just the thrust of Scott Cooper’s jaw or the tilt of Charlie Russell’s head hold the power to make the audience recoil in horror or erupt into peals of laughter.

And laughter is surprisingly frequent in the show. It seems Judd pinpoints the glimmers of hope that bounce off the River Thames and has his cast cling to them for dear life. Herons could be utterly bleak but isn’t. Mark Weinman as Charlie Russell is particularly relentless in extracting laughs from the audience with a flick of his doleful eyes.

Exacting direction and some electric performances successfully ignite the touch paper provided by Stephens’ script. Stand well back. “Bang.” Bang on.    

NSDF: “They Shoot elephants, don’t they?”

“People are the ultimate spectacle.” These are the words emblazoned atop the original film poster for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I’d be very interested to know whether Elephant’s Graveyard deliberately set out to disprove this slogan as people are the one thing that their play neglects. There is a town and there is a circus. There are bags of popcorn peeking out from curtains. There are slatted wooden crates, gauze screens and coloured bunting. There is mass hysteria and petit-bourgeois morality and there is elephanticide. There are interlocking monologues and physical set-pieces, choreographed to within an inch of their lives. But there is no characterisation. Meekly established conventions and over-wrought aesthetics don’t help. Mimed dialogue behind the monologues makes a brief appearance before retreating, tail between legs. An over-reliance on profiles and spotlighting washes out the cast’s features and with it any potential empathy.  Having a cast of fourteen repeatedly scratching and worrittin’ in the background on a sand-covered stage proves distracting. Erwin may be a small town that has “forgotten its own name” but it is also a town that has forgotten about people. The characters are victims of the show’s central conceit- repetitively paced monologues dull any sense of individual motivation.  Townspeople are barely distinguishable from the Circus folk. Issues of race, gender and poverty in post-war Tenessee are buried deep with the elephant carcass. They may not shoot the elephant, but they sure do shoot themselves in the foot.