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Fabric of Sleep |
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Exploding Fish Society, University of Aberystwyth |
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Morlan Centre Aberystwyth |
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May 4, 2009 |
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On approaching the venue I had mixed feelings about what I was going to be seeing in this production. Having been directly involved in creating the Aberfringe Festival, in which this production was a part of, I had heard ideas that were going into this that that would never usually appeal to me. I would like to say here and now how very wrong I was to presume this.The production, a devised piece created by the cast, was a fantastic interpretation of the journeys we go through in our sleep. It delved into how we can have a terribly monotonous day, go home and have the tedious nature of the day continue in dreamland. The production suggested to me that we are just as imprisoned in our sleep as we are in our awoken life. The cast was divided into 2 very contrasting groups. Dressed in white (a little cliché perhaps) were the weavers, the entities responsible for the ‘weaving of dreams’ throughout the world. Their main means of expression was through the use of their bodies, from expressionistic dance to conveying 7 people trapped together on a crowded subway train. For the most part I was totally engaged with their actions, but towards the end I felt that the movements were becoming very samey and I was longing for a big crescendo at the end which sadly did not come. On the other end of the spectrum we had the sins, dressed in black (cliché????) whose job it was to hack into people’s dreams and ruin them with every chance they got. There stage time was much more dialogue focused, which added a nice contrast to the weavers movement based performance. They all bounced off each other eloquently, creating a real sense of tension within the group, in particular when the tough decision whether to go through the ‘portal’ into the weavers world arose. The scene with the juggling ball in act one was a brilliant representation of longing and desire to relieve the boredom that they were all feeling. I did however think that having the sins out in the foyer before the show was a little disjointed, perhaps pointless as most of the audience were not watching them, leading me to ask the question why? Even though this was an ensemble piece, there were some standout performances. Megan Pritchard (as a dreamer) at the start showed us the very poignant nature of sleep, and by the end we saw the loss and pain that can be caused by the dream world. Both physically and vocally fantastic she is a performer to follow. Michael Jones as the other dreamer often had an accurate expression of melancholy on his face, which added to the sympathy we felt for him, in particular during the montage of events scene where he was just lay down at the back trying to process the manic nature of his current dream. During this montage, which saw a rock band created, a game of ‘ring-o-roses’ played and the boring routine of brushing teeth shown, there was a scene stealing performance by Leigh Kemp as a teacher whose ridiculous questions could not be answered by himself, let alone poor student Imogen Watts. I was in stitches for the 11 minutes he was playing this character, even if the montage did drag on towards the end. Special mention for Creative Assistant Joe Blockley who came into the cast at the last minute and did a very respectable job in a short amount of rehearsal time. The technical side of this production was superb. Simplistic, mostly wash lighting by Nikki Smith (also director) really added a sense of clarity to every scene, with only very subtle changes of intensity to reflect a change in mood. And I take my hat off to Adam Miller and his sound design which was, too put it bluntly, phenomenal. It accompanied the performance beautifully and I could happily say that he has a clear future in sound design should he choose to go that way. Under the very capable direction of Nikki Smith the cast and crew created a world that was both exultant and depressing, hopeful yet bleak and comic while tragic. I enjoyed it thoroughly and cannot wait for their next production. |
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| Jamie Harris (2nd year drama student at University of Aberystwyth) | |
| This review has been read 1215 times |
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