Tag Archives: Andrzej Goulding

Status

Status
β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½

Battersea Arts Centre

Status

Status

Battersea Arts Centre

Reviewed – 23rd April 2019

β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½

 

β€œThorpe is a gripping performer and writer who does not shy away from investigating the questions that shape our present”

 

β€œIf you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” This is the quote, a statement made by Theresa May, which emblazons the screen as we enter the theatre for Chris Thorpe’s one man show, β€˜Status’. Also onstage is a red guitar which he tunes periodically as his audience arrives.

The piece begins with a trip to Serbia where Chris is going to meet a writer. At a bar, he witnesses an incident of police brutality. When he intervenes and is slammed against a wall, his friend steps in. β€œYou can’t do that to him. He’s British.” These words let him go. Thorpe says that this is not a show about Brexit, but it is certainly a show about the questions Brexit throws up, about nationality and immigration and borders.

Thorpe performs with an emphatic engagedness, speaking in long sentences like the words refuse to end. As he, or a man called Chris who is not him, travels around the world with his two passports, the screen behind him showing snapshot postcards of his destinations (video design by Andrzej Goulding), Monument Valley and Singapore, he meets many people. A stateless man, a coyote who was once a person. There is a hallucinatory quality to much of his journey through the world.

Sometimes his words are accompanied by the guitar, which thrashes into the space, but it is a welcome break in texture. At times the endless sentences spoken always at pace, always so deliberately feel too repetitive, overly long, with little variation in tone. The performativity of the piece occasionally feels difficult to connect with. Perhaps this is also because whilst we are on a journey, it is a journey of pieces and so a coherent narrative drive flags as the piece progresses. Despite this, β€˜Status’ is without a doubt a frightening or frightened investigation into what nationality means, globally. Surreal but also very real.

Directed by Rachel Chavkin this is an urgent production that explores privilege (particularly white privilege), nationhood and global uncertainty. Thorpe is a gripping performer and writer who does not shy away from investigating the questions that shape our present.

 

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography by The Other Richard

 


Status

Battersea Arts Centre until 11th May then UK & European tour continues

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Dressed | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | February 2019
Frankenstein: How To Make A Monster | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | March 2019
How to Survive a Post-Truth Apocalypse | β˜…β˜…β˜… | May 2018
Rendezvous in Bratislava | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | November 2018

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com

 

Love-Lies-Bleeding – 4 Stars

Love-Lies-Bleeding

Love-Lies-Bleeding

Print Room at the Coronet

Reviewed – 14th November 2018

β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…

β€œThe cast’s depictions are all pin sharp, yet McGann stands out”

 

Alex is an artist enduring the final stages of his life following a brutal, second stroke. Living, barely, in the arid, American South West, he is the subject of practical and philosophical contemplations between his son Sean (Jack Wilkinson), second wife Toinette (Josie Lawrence) and fourth, younger wife Lia (Clara Indrani) as to when and how he should be guided into the beyond. We see Alex (Joe McGann) at different stages: in his cavorting and carefree prime, between strokes in a wheelchair, and finally in a vegetative state to be sedated at the whim of his significant others. His fate is now dependent on the trio’s conflicting views of him as a father or husband, as much as on their ponderings on morality and mortality.

As a novelist for whom writing is β€˜a concentrated form of thinking’, Don DeLillo seems impossible to transfer stylistically to the stage. His slow and sublime evocation of mood and abstract themes don’t promise much for a theatre-goer to engage with. Director Jack McNamara admits his reservations were eventually overcome only by having the resources to create theatricality by other means. That he pulls it off is a noteworthy feat. Lily Arnold’s set design shows us the comfortable sofa and wooden floor of Alex’s home, essential for long, angsty interactions, but surrounding it is the sand and scrub that symbolises the immense unknown, creating a sense that Alex and everyone else sit at the edge of eternity. Over this scene looms a huge transparent screen, host to some stunning video and lighting effects (Azusa Ono and Andrzej Goulding) which somehow create the distance and nostalgia of memories by technical means, assisted by cinematic sound design from Alexandra Faye Braithwaite.

Given the sedentary nature of the main character, action is difficult to contrive. The brilliance of the script prompts regular chuckles of appreciation from the audience, but emotional connection is harder to come by. The cast’s depictions are all pin sharp, yet McGann stands out, despite or because of having the hardest task, by breathing authenticity into a mostly cerebral role; an artist creating art out of his bleak context. This may or may not be a parallel with De Lillo himself, but given the control and precision in every aspect of the play, including this production, it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.

A memorable production, this Love-Lies-Bleeding matches poetic imagery with precise staging. However, if you’re left pleasantly haunted by the show, it’s accompanied by a strange desire to find a copy of the text to experience it properly, as a reader.

 

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by  Tristram Kenton

 


Love-Lies-Bleeding

Print Room at the Coronet until 8th December

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Open House | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | January 2018
The Comet | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | March 2018
How It Is (Part One) | β˜…β˜…Β½ | May 2018
Act & Terminal 3 | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | June 2018
The Outsider | β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… | September 2018

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com