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Art Heist

New Diorama Theatre

Reviewed – 18th October 2019

★★★½

“very slick with not one word, sound effect or movement out of place”

Imagine you’re trying to steal a painting. How would you manage it? Which picture would you choose? Why are you doing it? Art Heist, the newest play from Poltergeist Theatre and written and directed by Jack Bradfield, has its three protagonists consider these very questions while also exploring notions of value, identity and capitalism.

An experienced art thief looking for one last hit (Serena Yagoub), a lost soul who finds comfort in art (Rosa Garland), and a man obsessed with achieving the notoriety of the great art thieves of the past (Will Spence) all have their eye on one particular painting and will do anything to get their hands on it. From a desk positioned outside the stage space, the quick-witted Alice Boyd narrates and provides sound effects for the trio’s every move. Game or real, it’s not entirely clear, and this is further muddled by Boyd’s appearance on stage as a guard with a penchant for the trumpet.

The performance’s opening scenes are fast-paced and highly amusing as the three thieves and the guard establish their backstories and motivations to steal the painting. Yagoub is particularly strong here and gets huge laughs from the audience for her over the top but character-appropriate delivery. A scene in the museum’s gift shop is also delightfully playful.

The set (Shankho Chaudhuri) is entirely white apart from the occasional prop and the gilded frame of the painting in question on the back wall. Three plinths – amusingly marked Poltergeist I, II and III respectively with museum-style descriptions – and the frame are enough to establish that we are in an art gallery. A white frame sits around the whole stage which the characters either walk over or around which also aids in confusing reality and fiction. The lighting (Lucy Adams) is very well done and a scene in the gallery of sculptures where the stage is plunged into darkness except for Boyd’s flashing torch is masterful.

The use of multimedia is the production’s most impressive feature. After opening gambits, Boyd switches on two screens either side of the stage which are linked to two portable cameras. One camera is initially positioned high-up on the wall like a security camera while the other captures more mundane scenes such as Garland making a sandwich. These cameras eventually move around and are used in various clever ways. Spence sits on the floor, his feet against the stage’s frame and films his feet edging along as if he is walking along a building ledge. Yagoub positions the camera at an angle to make it appear as though by wiggling across the floor on her stomach that she is in fact scaling a building. At one point, an audience member even becomes a camera man!

There is meaningful commentary to be found in Art Heist, but it is not frequent enough to really pack a punch. Spence tells the play’s most interesting anecdote about how it was the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 that catapulted this previously relatively unknown portrait into fame. The painting’s gold frame is also used excellently at the performance’s end to drive home ideas about narrative and how much more there is so much more than what we can see. Unfortunately, moments of reflection were often quickly abandoned in favour of jokes or moving the increasingly chaotic plot forward.

Art Heist is very slick with not one word, sound effect or movement out of place. Poltergeist undoubtedly know how to put on a show, but a better balance between the serious and comedy in their newest endeavour would elevate it to a new level.

Reviewed by Flora Doble

Photography by The Other Richard

Art Heist

New Diorama Theatre until 26th October

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Close Up | ★★★ | February 2018

It Made me Consider | ★★★ | February 2018

Trap Street | ★★★★ | March 2018

Left my Desk | ★★★★ | May 2018

Bitter | ★★★ | June 2018

Taking Flight | ★★★ | June 2018

4.48 Psychosis | ★★★★ | September 2018

Boys | ★★★★★ | November 2018

The War Of The Worlds | ★★★½ | January 2019

Operation Mincemeat | ★★★★★ | May 2019

Click here to see our most recent reviews

The Accident did not Take Place

Pleasance Theatre

Reviewed – 5th October 2019

★★

“an ambitious agenda that suggests a lot of interesting directions that the work might take”

The Accident Did Not Take Place begins promisingly enough with three engaging performers on stage, a screen and a couple of cameras. We are introduced to a dramatic situation in which the (presumed) last moments of a flight to New York are described. An audience member is invited to step up on stage and become part of the performance. The rest of us are assured that this person is a professional, and is willing to participate, though unprepared for what might happen during the show. This approach is designed to break down the idea that this is just a story being presented on stage, and to make the whole experience – for performers and the audience – more intense, more “hyper-real”, in the sense that there is more than one way to view what is taking place on stage, and more than one way to examine our responses to it.

The scene of the last moments of a flight to New York is then repeated, with one performer instructing the new member of the company how to act as the scene unfolds. The scene is repeated nine times, as the performers enact a different configuration of actions and dialogue. At replay number six, one of the performers begins to film the others, and the video is projected onto the screen at the back of the stage. Replay number seven introduces irony, as the whole scene is reduced to a box in which silhouette figures enact the action, while a large human hand intrudes on the space to move the silhouettes around. By the time replay number nine rolls around, we are at the point of a dramatic sequence indicated by numbers only, performed at a dizzying pace as the dialogue flashes up on the screen. The whole replay is accompanied by music and dry ice that obscures, rather than intensifies, the action taking place in front of our eyes.

The YesYesNoNo company, led by artist Sam Ward and producer Rhian Davies, describe their approach to theatre as “work that explores what connection might look like in a digital world. Some people call our work theatre. Some people don’t.” The Accident Did Not Take Place is described as “a summoning of hyper-reality. A new guest performer each night. A frenzy of post-truth news.” This is an ambitious agenda that suggests a lot of interesting directions that the work might take. But the piece is unquestionably a work of theatre (the word is derived from the Greek verb “theáomai” which means to view, after all.) Furthermore, it is taking place in a ‘hot’ medium, as Marshall McLuhan puts it, so there are no distractions from what is taking place on stage. If the audience’s part in all this is to reflect on its own role in the act of viewing (and the second part of the show certainly makes much of this idea) then the show runs the risk of undercutting its own point of view.

One could argue that presenting a myriad of different points of view from a variety of sources that may, or may not be “truthful” is an accurate reflection of contemporary society, obsessed as it is with problems of “post-truth”. There is certainly a place in contemporary theatre for artists that do deal with the most urgent issues facing society, and which are every bit as attention getting as a plane crash. But audiences may ultimately leave asking themselves what is more important: to question what is taking place on stage, and to examine one’s own responses to it, or to engage with how we act, and how we respond, to what is taking place outside the theatre? They may exit thinking this sounds a lot more political, than philosophical. And that it owes a lot to Brecht, who was never afraid to tell a good story even while questioning the values of the societies he presented on stage – and his own.

New Diorama Theatre

Reviewed – 18th October 2019

★★★½

“very slick with not one word, sound effect or movement out of place”

Art Heist is very slick with not one word, sound effect or movement out of place. Poltergeist undoubtedly know how to put on a show, but a better balance between the serious and comedy in their newest endeavour would elevate it to a new level.

Reviewed by Flora Doble

Photography by The Other Richard

Art Heist

New Diorama Theatre until 26th October

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Pleasance Theatre

Reviewed – 5th October 2019

★★

“an ambitious agenda that suggests a lot of interesting directions that the work might take”

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by The Other Richard

The Accident did not Take Place

Pleasance Theatre until 6th October

Previously reviewed at this venue: