At Volcano Theatre |
| Volcano Theatre with film-maker John Hardwick - At Home for the Weekend , Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff , November 19, 2005 |
| This review first appeared in the Western Mail... An ordinary three-storey house round the corner from Chapter Arts Centre in Canton has become the scene of some of the most interesting performance work in Cardiff, whether as the venue for a set of plays enacted in different rooms, part of an autobiographical exploration, a set of installations or a collection of dramas based on each part of the building. Now it is a kind of make-believe anthropological museum, around which we are taken as on an audio guided tour by the ever-surprising Volcano Theatre in collaboration with film-maker John Hardwick – not that this is, of course, an ordinary tour or an ordinary house. Equipped with a plan of the house, a torch and a personal CD player, the audience is free to explore the ten identified locations at leisure. In one room, for example, we observe through a glass window a crowd of young people dancing, i-pods in ears, ecstatic looks on faces – but bopping, according to what we hear, to Bach rather than party music. In the kitchen next door, with the usual detritus of a student household where the one on the cleaning-up rota hasn’t got out of bed for week, we hear some useful tips for organising a nice middle-class party complete with handsome barman, delivered in Richard-and-Judy style. In the attic we are reminded of the rodents that scuttle about, in the box room we are privy to an altercation between a strange invisible couple. I guess it depends where you start, but I began at the beginning, so to speak, and found myself at Number 1, The Corner, “that most sordid of havens” as my female guide describes it, elevated from a nondescript spot to a treasure-trove of symbols, the seriousness of which I began to doubt only when an anonymous poet is quoted as saying “you are the space where you are”. It may be authentic mumbo-jumbo, but mumbo-jumbo it is, as is much that follows, done with exquisite po-faced irony by audio-guides Paul Davies and Fern Smith. Number 2, The Fireplace, has an earnest history of fire and its primeval power to offer comfort, Number 4, On The Stairs, explores the psychological significance of doors, while Number 10, The Cellar Door, takes this further with a semantic meditation on the words and the philosophical implications of opening that particular door. It’s as well that the rest of the audience, ghostly figures you pass on the stairs or sense in a dark room (it’s mostly in the dark), have earphones on because I found myself laughing out loud at some of the commentaries. Not all is irony – and if you don’t do irony I suspect this guided tour is lost on you – and there is a room at the top of the house where we are invited to “step carefully through your dream” and for a few moments a soundscape does take us on a sea voyage and threatens to lull us to sleep as the bedroom becomes a gently rocking boat – until we are rudely awoken by a jaunty little song called I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper, Erica Eigen’s bizarre novelty hit of the 90s. And there is one room, Number 7, where we are instructed to take off our earphones and we discover the nearest to live theatre, as a couple, not unlike the disembodied ones we met in The Box Room, whose antagonistic conversation, you realise, is on a never-ending loop. Maybe I have committed a postmodern gaffe and missed the irony here. Or seen irony when none was intended elsewhere ? Is Gaston Bachelard to be taken seriously ?What a cultural conundrum ! And how ironic. After all, I’m a critic – get me out of here. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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