| An entertaining and fascinating evening |
At Volcano Theatre |
| Volcano Theatre company- i-witness , Theatr Clwyd , Mold , December 21, 2008 |
So how do you dramatise a book that, although written in and about Suffolk, is firmly in the tradition of the kind of European philosophical enquiry that has a traveller musing on life, death, history, literature, myth and abstract ideas? If you’re Volcano, with a book that features a walk taken by the German writer, W.G.Sebald, then you dramatise those very ideas and musings.The Rings of Saturn contains a powerful and moving account of the author’s collapse following his walk down the Suffolk coast. Reading like reality this passage is complete fiction. i-witness contains a playful account by Fern Smith of her re-tracing that walk, complete with amateurish black and white photos and delivered as though it was an enthusiastic talk to her local WI. Feeling like a parody this is in fact a true account of a real walk with her real photographs. Does it affect their validity if you take the one as reality and the other one as fiction? How in fact should we react to an erudite book that plays with our notions of reality? Should the different reactions we may have affect the book itself, or our ideas about other books, or other people’s reactions to the book in question? Does any of this sound like a good evening at the theatre? Well it should do because, aside from the odd section that either doesn’t work or that I didn’t get (what was all that primal screaming about?), this is the most exhilarating and theatrical show I’ve seen from Volcano for some while. For a start they’ve found new ways to discomfort an audience. The opening film, with the cast constantly re-positioning themselves while watching it, is in grave danger of alienating us by seeming to take up too much of the performance time before we’ve had any chance to judge its context. In retrospect of course it is a vital part of giving a sense of the book before it becomes anatomised. Literally so at the show’s climax, when it is eviscerated noisily in a mad parody of Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson. It must also be the first time that Volcano has used silence as an in-yer-face technique. Following an emotional outburst from Paul Davies the four actors sit in agonized, embarrassed silence which goes on for an astonishing length of time. The awkwardness they show begins to communicate to the audience and our silence starts to become awkward too. But it’s also a show with music, dancing, battles, co-incidence and food. Catherine Bennett, who directed the opening film, demonstrates the art of eating (and later smashing up) cherry tomatoes while Philip Ralph, often the voice of reason, stuffs himself with pickled herrings, leaving their memory in their lingering odour. If all that sounds like a mishmash, well that is what the book that inspired the show is. And how often do you come out of a show whistling the ideas as it were. The only thing that bothered me about this entertaining and fascinating evening was the note in the programme that thanked two people for the use of their house. If you could see the state of the stage at the end you do wonder if said house is still standing. |
Reviewed by: Victor Hallett |
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