| Crash by Sera Moore Williams |
| First presented in 2004 by Arad Goch |
| cast size:2 |
There are 3 reviews of Arad Goch's Crash in our database:
| Physical metallic poetry | |
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Crash
by Sera Moore Williams
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[print] |
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venue Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth |
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December 15, 2001 |
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| David Rabey’s Crash at Theatr Y Catsell is an extraordinary achievement. Nine relatively inexperienced actors – students of his – tackle a script (his script) which is a kind of physical metallic poetry laden with a graphic sexual language. The play is based on the Ballard novel, of course, which was recently filmed by David Cronenberg so it was interesting to compare this theatre piece with the film. Mamet has said that film tells its story through pictures while theatre tells it story through words and wondering how Rabey would deal with the business of crashing I should not have been surprised to discover that he would instinctively echo Mamet’s assessment. The play tells its story in a series of narratives that derive from, it seemed to me, a car accident involving the actress Liz Hurley! I occasionally lost the thread of it perhaps because it comes at you with such force and speed. But also I thought it may have been because of Rabey’s convention of having each actor play each character in turn scene by scene. In fact, this didn’t seem to matter just as it didn’t matter that we weren’t afforded the becoming familiar with a particular actor to help us engage with the character. It is to show us something mechanical, deadly, twenty first century, frightening, dehumanising and decharacterising that is so much a part of Rabey’s intention. There are no props except for a chair of steel and rubber (body and tyre) and apart from one explosive moment when an oil drum sweeps across the clerestory of the theatre to crash into an oil drum anchored on the other side of the space, all the crashing is conveyed in the movement of the actors. When you consider that none have had any serious training in movement (I was told), the ambition of the decision to play it like this is stunningly audacious and yet they pull it off. To say that David Rabey’s work is always unexpected is not quite true because we expect the unexpectedness! But it is always intensely theatrical and invariably surprising and often stunning which is what keeps you involved and makes the two and a half hours in this case seem like considerably less. And I am always amazed at what he is able to get out of his novice casts. To return to the film/theatre dichotomy. This is theatre. It may sound trite to say that when one of the actors pukes up a mouthful of water over a member of the audience (his reaction for me was part of the performance!) you know you are not in a cinema but there is something so utterly physical and undetachable about the experience of having the arguments in your face, of having actors simulate an act of buggery three feet from you that speaks to a deeper engagement. That deeper engagement is a moral one. In a cinema, the audience’s experience is essentially a passive one. What the audience sees on the screen and how they see it has already been decided by the director. There is nothing creative about the experience and hence nothing moral. David Rabey is a subtle director. By which I mean that he doesn’t use the event of his play to show off his talents but instead uses it to get the actors to reveal the arguments. If there is a space between the audience and the action in a play – and here there is not much! – it’s one that’s fraught with the arguments of the piece and we are engaged creatively and morally with those arguments. In cinema, the space between the audience and the screen, apart from the dust particles caught in the projector’s light, is empty. I’ve seen the film and while I was impressed with the cinematic virtues of it I found it unengaging and even patronising while Rabey’s play was the reverse of this. Sitting in the theatre with the very effective chrome walls and chrome floor of Victoria Kippax’s design was like sitting in huge garage and the actors Harriet Coffey, Stephen Cromwell, Kate Freeman, Isobel Jones, Emma Proudlock, Fred Sandy, Nathan Sarchet-Waller, Sian Saunders and Phil Waterhouse were mechanics. I applaud the Mechanics! Eric Schneider’s excellently utilised brilliantly minimalistic music does not intrude (I hate music in theatre which seeks to elicit emotional responses which compromise the intellectual): instead, it evokes with its steely precision the hard consonant sounds of that words intellect and curiously reinforces the fact that this is an intensely political piece: we are engaged in arguments about social values. Theatre is like poetry. It distils the arguments and imagery of the “real” world that most people miss into a new reality. It creates new worlds. A new ontology. Rabey’s ontology is of a world in which the metaphysics, the preoccupations of our intellect and language are increasingly determined by our imprisonment in a bubble going nowhere in a river of steel. |
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| reviewer: Dic Edwards |
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| Unrepeatable, unforgettable | |
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Crash
by Sera Moore Williams
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[print] |
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venue Aberglasney Gardens Llandeilo |
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September 13, 2006 |
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| This is not theatre, insists it’s creator Firenza Guidi, it is performance. Performers incarnate : they do not represent, illustrate or describe. That of course, does not stop her “performance installations” from being full of theatricality. Ms Guidi, the Cardiff-based Italian internationalist, also says that the location of any performance is a co-player-and walking through Aberglasney Gardens twice (as I did, being fortunate to see both afternoon and evening performances of Crash) I know what she means. Crash is quite simply one of the most exciting pieces of theatre - no, sorry, performance - that you could ever hope to see, even by Ms Guidi’s standards. Nothing happens, there is no narrative, no named characters, but for an hour we inhabit another world, one forged by the nature of the place, what we see and hear from the performers, and what we contribute by our presence and our own selective engagement. No, it is not an audience-involvement show. But if the location is a co-performer, then so is the audience : and with it that ambiguity of not knowing whether we are spectators, voyeurs, participants, invisible or visible. Perhaps the best way to describe the experience is to see Crash as more like an art work- except it changes, it moves, it’s live. We start by standing by as a girl collects water from a small waterfall, she and her friend at the top full of laughter ; a sterner girl walks by and fixes us with a gaze, a lady with a parasol promenades past. We moved on: there’s a party going on in the Ninfarium ; a girl is taking a bath in the yard opposite: a girl perched on a wall rocks a cradle with her foot. Down into the cloister garden and it’s mayhem : a man at a typewriter is making a report, another man dressed as a school ma’am keeps some boys at their desk : young people in nooks play with model trains or show us their garden gnomes ; a man in a white suit looks flurried ; then everyone’s rushing about. We get the idea we are visitors to some fantastic school. We climb steps and walk along the top of the garden wall and up to the aviary, now cages for holding more young people, while below in the walled garden there’s more scampering and jollity, including people riding bikes and rickshaws. But a dark side to this apparently libertarian world has been hinted at. Then it’s along to the edge of the large pool ; behind us they’re abseiling down the wall in a kind of dance to the music ; as we turn to look at the lake a man slowly rises as in some legend. Finally, everyone is dancing and singing in the sunken garden and it’s all over. Look for a strand to help you make sense and you’ll be disappointed – along the starting point is Kazua Ishiguru’s Never Let Me Go, the text has been fragmented into a collection of images from which we can assemble our own story. Crash is the culmination of a Ms Guidi project, this time for her Elan company, made up of practitioners from Wales, Italy, Iceland, Germany, France and England, which has played all over Europe and here integrates European performers with young people from Llais, Coleg Sir Gar and local schools. I have never seen a group of young people so confidently and enthusiastically take ownership of their own performance tableaux. Take such talent, including the marvellous international performers, the stunning live music, add the magic of Aberglasney, and the prodigious genius of Ms Guidi and you have Crash, unrepeatable, unforgettable. David Adams Western Mail Fri 8th September 2006 |
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| reviewer: David Adams |
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| Portread sinistr o wacter ystyr.. | |
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Crash
by Sera Moore Williams
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[print] |
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venue Gerddi Aberglasni, Llandeilo |
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September 17, 2006 |
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| Gerddi Aberglasne, noson olaf Awst. Wrth i’r gynulleidfa ymgasglu mewn ystafell garegog ym mhlasdy Aberglasne, roedd hi’n anodd peidio â chofio ’nôl, yn glir iawn, i ddyddiau Brith Gof. Ac er mor gyfarwydd, rywsut, oedd y geiriau ar y daflen: ‘as a spectator, you are also a creator’, roedd y fersiwn Gymraeg: ‘chwaneg na th? yn chwalu’ yn anniddigo rhywun. Hynny, a’r teitl: CRASH. Cafwyd gair o groeso gan y cyfarwyddwraig, Firenza Guidi, a’i chydweithiwr, Ioan Hefin. Esboniwyd mai ffrwyth prosiect cyd-wladol oedd y cynhyrchiad ac mai ôl gwaith wythnos o ymarfer caled gan bobl ifanc o bum gwlad yn Ewrop oedd o’n blaenau ni. Gyda hynny, fe’n gwahoddwyd i ddilyn y perfformiad ar ei daith bromenâd o gwmpas yr ardd. Wedi ei hysbrydoli gan nofel Kazuo Ishiguro ‘Never Let Me Go’, mae’r stori’n ymagor i ddangos bywydau myfyrwyr mewn ysgol sydd wedi ei chreu’n arbennig er mwyn clonio merched a bechgyn a fydd yn rhoi organau eu cyrff i drigolion y byd tu allan i’r ysgol. Ond mae’r cynllun yn cymhlethu. Mae’r llywodraeth yn anfon arolygwr a seicolegydd i asesu llwyddiant y disgyblion a’r athrawon cyn penderfynu a ddylid diddymu’r ysgol gyfan. Dim ond un ffordd sydd i osgoi’r diddymu anochel hwn – sef trwy brofi eich bod mewn cariad. Ond sut mae gwneud hyn? Er gwaethaf yr olwg amheus ar wynebau’r cyhoedd ar ddechrau’r sioe, llwyddodd y cynhyrchiad grymus ddal gafael yn nychymyg y mwyafrif mawr. Roedd yr ymateb ar ddiwedd y gwaith – gan bobl o bob oed – yn profi eu bod wedi eu cyfareddu gan ddeinamig yr actio a’r lleoliad. Dyma enghraifft o sioe oedd yn ymestyn hyd at y bizarre ac eto, un a oedd yn llwyddo osgoi creu’r fath dyndra yn llinynau ei stori nes eu bod yn torri a gadael y gwyliwr yn gwbl ddi-gyfeiriad. Roedd hyder yr actorion ifanc yn herio’r gynulleidfa bob cam (yn llythrennol). Heb fawr ddim deialog geiriol, roedd y cyfathrebu’n gorfforol, a’r adweithio’n digwydd rhwng y cyhoedd â’r actorion yn llawn cymaint â rhwng y cast â’i gilydd. At hyn, roedd arogl y lafant a d?r y llyn, eco’r muriau ac awyr y gwyll yn ychwanegu at y profiad. Roedd y cyfarwyddo wedi manteisio ar bob posibiliad dramatig yn y lleoliad. Defnyddiwyd y gwagle o dan y bwau ym muriau’r ardd yn effeithiol, wrth i’r actorion ymddangos yn gwbl ynysig, pob un a’i gêm fach ei hunan. Yna roedd yr olygfa o ben y mur – gyda’r actorion fel pe byddent am syrthio – yn ddigon i ddychryn y mwyaf eofn yn ein plith. Roedd tempo’r gwaith yn newid yn gyson a’r emosiwn yn rhuthro o’r llawen i’r lleddf ond heb fod fyth yn gysurus. Yng nghanol y darlun gormesol o ddyfodol heb na chymdeithas nac ystyr, roedd hiwmor yn gymorth i gadw diddordeb wrth i ddau gymeriad chwarae gwyddbwyll gyda’r teganau rhad ac am ddim o MacDonalds. Ond prin oedd y cyfle i wenu – ar y cyfan roedd y gwaith yn bortread sinistr o wacter ystyr wrth i’r bobl ifanc fethu’n lân ag aeddfedu na dod i delerau gyda’i hamgylchfyd. Cyrhaedodd y darlun du hwn uchafbwynt i mi, wrth i ni weld mam yn gwthio gwn mewn pram ac yna’n ei fagu yn ei breichiau. Ar ôl golygfa drawiadol ger ac yn y llyn – trodd y perfformiad tua’i siwrne olaf. Ar bwys gatiau’r plasd?, cafwyd datganiad cyfareddol ar offeryn cerdd newydd sbon o’r Swisdir. Rhywbeth a oedd yn fwy tebyg i ‘woc’ na dim byd arall ac yn s?n hwn, a chloch fach, fe’n harweinwyd ni yn ôl i’r man cychwyn. Gadewais i am adre, fel bron pawb arall, wedi f’ ysgwyd – gan egni a dawn yr actorion ifanc a chan y neges: mae’n rhaid i ni ddal gafael yn yr hyn sy’n ein gwneud ni’n unigryw ac ymwrthod unrhyw rymoedd sy’n ceisio eu gorau i’n troi ni gyd yn glôn o ryw ddelfryd anghyraeddadwy. |
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| reviewer: Mererid Hopwood |
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