Rebecca Crankshaw Archives - Page 10 of 33

Dadderrs / In a Way so Brutal

The Yard Theatre

Reviewed – 22nd January 2020

Dadderrs ★★★ In a Way so Brutal ★★★★

“This is an intensely theatrical evening, but it is stretching the definition of theatre, to the extent that you might well question it”

Just occasionally (I’ve only done it once before in my two and a half years reviewing for Spy in the Stalls) an assignment demands that I step out of the traditional anonymity assigned to the critic; last night’s double bill at The Yard was one such evening. This is visceral work that wants our involvement. And though, yes, there are elements of ‘audience participation’, that isn’t really what I mean. I mean, in LIFE. It is work that shouts, ‘BE ACTIVE. GET INVOLVED. THINK. QUESTION. LIVE.’ I’ll be turning 50 in a few months time, and was definitely one of the oldies in the audience, and I left feeling invigorated and excited by the creative possibilities being explored by these contemporary makers, even if not everything was to my taste. This is an intensely theatrical evening, but it is stretching the definition of theatre, to the extent that you might well question it. Is this theatre? Or is it performance art? Whatever your answer might be, it’s mighty refreshing to be made to think about it!

First up is Dadderrs, performed by husband and wife team – or husband and husband/wife team, as they introduce themselves – Daniel Oliver and Frauke Requardt. It isn’t a play, so much as a happening, akin to the work of 1960s performance artists, both here and across the Atlantic, and it combines many elements beloved of that period – nudity, paint, surreal costume, haze, audience involvement, singing and an otherworldly soundscape (credit here to Steve Blake’s terrific work). Frauke and Daniel invite us into their marriage, and into an uninhibited, intimate, honest, playful, shame-free world of their devising – the Meadowdrome. Daniel is dyspraxic and Frauke has ADHD, and the piece plays with their different tempos; in so doing, it invites us to think about difference, and how harmony can be found there. Ultimately, it is a piece about love. Spoken by an audience member and left hanging in the air as the stage is plunged back into the soundless dark, love is the very last word. Love.

Coming back into the space after the interval, it’s clear that we’re about to witness a very different spectacle with In a Way so Brutal. (It’s also clear why the interval overran by 20 minutes!) The level of art and artifice has stepped up a gear, and we are presented with a stunning (and also seriously tongue in cheek) living picture. Eirini Kartsaki is posed like a Botticelli, all curvy flesh and flowing tresses, but…her nipples are suction-cupped with plastic, and there are Sarah Lucas-like stuffed stocking shapes adorning the ‘set’. Tasos Stamou’s table of sonic wizardry is lit up like a miniature futuristic cityscape, and Stamou himself produces sound as a chemist produces psychedelics. Quite apart from the exceptional music he was making, watching him work was hypnotic. Kartsaki is a powerful presence on stage, both visually and vocally. Although the words themselves seemed curiously ‘retro-shock’ to me, the combined visual, sonic and aural sense assault ended up seducing me with its fierce and sexy punk energy. And seduction by theatre is never a bad thing.

The Yard’s Now festival is billed as ‘the festival of the best theatre for right Now’. Whether or not you agree will arguably depend on what your experience of ‘right now’ is. If the status quo suits, this evening won’t be for you; if not, it might well be exactly the joyful, anarchic fix you’re crying out for.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Maurizio Martorana

Dadderrs / In a Way so Brutal

The Yard Theatre until 25th January as part of Now 20

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Hotter Than A Pan | ★★★★ | January 2019

Plastic Soul | ★★★★ | January 2019

A Sea Of Troubles | ★★★★★ | February 2019

Cuteness Forensics | ★★½ | February 2019

Sex Sex Men Men | ★★★★★ | February 2019

To Move In Time | ★★½ | February 2019

Ways To Submit | ★★★★ | February 2019

Armadillo | ★★★★ | June 2019

Dirty Crusty | ★★★★ | November 2019

Pecsmas | ★★★★★ | December 2019

Click here to see our most recent reviews

★

“this shallow and melodramatic take on the play adds nothing to Genet’s original text”

The Maids is a French play, written by Jean Genet and first performed in 1947, about two housemaids – sisters – who have created a sado-masochistic world through which they devise rituals around the fantasy of killing their mistress. This Turkish production has ‘updated’ the story to contemporary London, and the maids mostly speak their native language, apart from when speaking to their off-stage mistress. Their is scope here for a fairly devastating look at the unseen slavery in the houses of the London super-rich, but, alas, this shallow and melodramatic take on the play adds nothing to Genet’s original text, and instead takes away a great deal.

The Maids is a difficult play to stage well; both its emotions and its language are heightened to a degree that removes it from the naturalistic. We are in a claustrophobic imaginary world of sex and power, in which the language continually unsettles, by endlessly see-sawing from overblown Baudelairian symbolism to the filthiest street slang imaginable. The language is essential to the understanding of this play, as it is the oral manifestation of the extraordinary secret world which the sisters have built for themselves over years of living together in stifling emotional deprivation; so it is a nigh on impossible job to engage an audience in this world when 90% of the script (for the Brits in the audience) is read in surtitles, as here. Turkish is a beautiful, rich, expressive language but, in a small pub theatre in London, it seems an exceptionally large ask to require the performers to battle through such a particularly demanding French text for what will inevitably be a largely British audience. It is fantastic to hear other languages spoken on our stages – London is a polyglot city after all – but why not a Turkish play? There seemed no compelling drive to tell this particular story; if there was, it was certainly lost in translation.

The two performers were exhausting to watch, mainly because they were breathless throughout. Relentless panting is neither sexy nor emotionally intense, and it became tedious very quickly indeed. Given that this production chose a difficult language path, it particularly behoved the director to help the performers find a rich physical language to help them tell this story. Frustratingly, the movement was repetitive and full of cliche; entirely devoid of danger or tension. The sisters’ relationship was completely dead; devoid of the bedrock of love and companionship which has slowly morphed into this twisted game of power and desire. Too often, the actors felt marooned on stage without any sense of narrative purpose, and attempted to fill this emptiness by over-emoting. Unfortunately this only added to the tawdry, ghost-train atmosphere supplied by the unhelpful sound and lighting design. The off-stage voice of the mistress was curiously atonal and one-note, and overall the production ended up as nothing more than a dispiriting melodrama, with nothing to tell us.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

The Yard Theatre

Reviewed – 22nd January 2020

Dadderrs ★★★ In a Way so Brutal ★★★★

“This is an intensely theatrical evening, but it is stretching the definition of theatre, to the extent that you might well question it”

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Maurizio Martorana

Dadderrs / In a Way so Brutal

The Yard Theatre until 25th January as part of Now 20

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Hen and Chickens Theatre

Reviewed – 15th January 2020

★

“this shallow and melodramatic take on the play adds nothing to Genet’s original text”

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

The Maids / Hizmetçiler

Hen and Chickens Theatre

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: