| Unrepeatable, unforgettable |
Crash |
| ELAN Wales , Aberglasney Gardens Llandeilo , September 13, 2006 |
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 |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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