Whilst the Vault tunnels have been home to all sorts over the years, there’s no doubt that its truest form is horror; the dark interiors, cold brick walls dripping with condensation, the thud-thud-thud of occasional trains overhead. What else could you ask for to be put in the mood for terror-striking blood and gore?
Expial Atrocious’s Butchered seems especially fitting given it takes place deep underground, below the greedy, glutinous Top Steps. Master Sausage works day and night to make string upon string of sausages, never able to sate their faceless employer. But one day, they’re sent an eager wide-eyed novice, who insists on asking the questions Master Sausage can’t bear to hear: Why are you here? Who were you before? What do you really want?
There’s a temptation to see this as a wider metaphor, particularly with Master Sausage’s idolisation of their monstrous meat grinder, and their self-inflicted incuriosity about those making the orders upstairs. But if you start doing that, it gets a bit too lofty and takes away from what’s simply a very good horror story.
Directors and performers Nic Lawton and Ezre Holland have clearly worked together a long time, perfectly in sync, both comedically and physically: As the audience files in, Lawton and Holland perform a sort of butchery ballet on repeat, slicing the meat open, cutting a chunk off, feeding it to the dreaded grinder, mushing in some other ingredients, stuffing it in to a casing, and passing it upstairs. This is repeated throughout, showing the physical labour of the job as well as its utter tedium, and it’s actually quite beautiful to watch.
Considering the only real prop is a metal bowl filled with pink silly putty, Butchered is exceedingly gory, and I find myself, sat on the front row, strenuously grimacing and trying to sit as far back on my pew as possible. As with all horror stories whose prime intent is to make you squirm, the story is a bit silly, but Lawton and Holland are skilled at bringing enough humour to make it self-aware, whilst also committing to the gothic grimness. There’s quite a bit of plot being only hinted at or so quickly explained I’m not sure I’ve got it all, and if it were any longer, I might require further narrative explanation. But at 50 minutes, it’s just right.
“There’s a lot packed into this sixty five minute show, and it will make you think”
Polish actor Remi Rachuba gives a high octane account of his early experiences teaching English in his one man show Intruder/Intruz. The most important part of this story, however, is not that Rachuba goes to Scotland to be a teacher, but that he wants to come to Scotland to follow his dream of becoming an actor. Such a circuitous route into the acting profession is, as might be expected, fraught with pitfalls. Rachuba, to his credit, manages to present this tale in a way that is by turns, funny, horrifying and ultimately uplifting.
Intruder/Intruz begins, after a comic lesson in Glaswegian slang, with a violent mugging. What follows is a non-linear telling of Rachuba’s attempts to report the crime against him, and participate in restorative justice against his attackers. Switching rapidly between scenes set in Glasgow, Warsaw, and Edinburgh, among others, Rachuba presents us with a play about a man who refuses to be beaten down even when he is being beaten up.
Intruder/Intruz is an unusual piece because it is told in English, Polish and Glaswegian. Rachuba is obviously fluent in all three—no mean feat. This fact is important because Intruder/Intruz is not just a drama about an English teacher struggling to teach in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and about a series of attacks, both physical and linguistic, upon him. Audiences might be forgiven for thinking that the Intruder in the title is just a reference to Rachuba’s attackers, and the phobias that threaten his psychological well being after the event. But Intruz has another meaning as well. That of the intruder—an unwelcome immigrant—arriving in a foreign land. Intruder/Intruz is an eye opening account of the violence that immigrants have to reckon with, as they move to a different country to pursue a dream. There’s a lot packed into this sixty five minute show, and it will make you think.
Intruder/Intruz is also not the most accessible of shows unless you are, like its creator, fluent in English, Polish and Glaswegian. If you aren’t, quite a few of Rachuba’s words are going to be lost because there are no subtitles to help. It’s hard to tell from moment to moment where you are in time in the story, as Rachuba switches with breath taking speed from present to past and back again. He is an engaging performer, and director Marcus Montgomery Roche makes the most of the space at the Network Theatre. But the threads of Rachuba’s narrative bend and weave until suddenly, without much warning, you’re at the end. The individual scenes in Intruder/Intruz, such in Rachuba’s classroom with his special needs students; his acting audition; his encounter with a student in a Polish casino before an important English test, are memorable—and wryly humorous. These moments of comedy contrast vividly with the violence that is at the heart of this piece. And there are also moments when you wonder how Rachuba could ever summon up the courage to return to the places where he was under such constant attack.
If you’re looking for a solo show that is distinctively different, and you don’t mind a linguistic challenge—you will find Intruder/Intruz well worth your time. It is an energetic show from an actor who left Warsaw and came to Glasgow to realize his dream.
