I think this overstayed its welcome and its defining gimmick. We go into a room with headphones on the chairs; the lights go out, and we get shouted at through the headphones. For the first monologue of the play's three, this is terrifying, and terrifyingly effective. A voice is telling us about joining a violent racist group, and we're totally buying it--by which I mean, I was completely entranced, and not more than a little bit seduced, alone in the dark with a voice. It felt very video game like in a particular way: like that bit in a shooter where you sit there, unable to move your virtual body but able to turn your head around. Being led about the theatre to another set of rooms, with more chairs, through the fog and lights was also in its way extraordinary, building on the idea of being coerced and yelled at. I could feel myself warming to the simultaneous levels the play was working on: coercion, voice, embodiment...
And then I'll admit it all sort of fell to shit, in the last two monologues. I'll give the middle one a pass: oh, polite English stereotype, secretly kind of hateful, repressed homosexuality, brief dystopic elements. But the last one, with its monologue about a Christ-like baby ostrich (SRSLY), was about 70% outright stupid. And, yes, about 30% immensely effective: talking about how animals are slaughtered, standing about in the dark, with a voice speaking directly into your ears, will put the wobble in your eating meat for weeks to come.
I left wishing that this setup had been applied, frankly, to better plays--or that the work (three monologues by Philip Ridley) was more focused and, well, less naff in places. A theatre performance is not a buffet--and I feel like some of the discordant elements will, despite their lack of focus, haunt me for a while. But, even as I admired the technical acumen of the production and the fluid commitment of the actor, I wish this script had spent less time tripping over cliches.
No comments:
Post a Comment