At Volcano Theatre |
| Volcano Theatre- The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet , Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff , October 23, 2004 |
| The thought of a new Volcano production filled me with a great deal of excitement. Whilst I might not have completely understood the first show I saw, I did appreciate the gusto, vitality and exciting conviction the company had brought to it. Following that, Fern Smith’s ‘The Imaginary Women’ was a superb piece of theatre art. Within a few moments of the opening of this performance I knew I was going to be disappointed and most regrettably nothing subsequently happened to make me change my mind. Co-director, Paul Davies, an artist for whom I’ve developed a great respect, tells us that he “always thought that Romeo and Juliet is an unnecessary play. Why unnecessary? Well, if you are in love the last thing you want to do is spend several hours in a theatre watching actors say they are in love and then kill themselves. And then if you are not in love there surely is nothing worse than attending a play that has pretensions to be one of the greatest love stories of all time. For those of us in love the play is a melodramatic harbinger of doom, for those of us out of love the play is too slow to kill off the maudlin pair.” That, of course is a very eccentric view that would not find a lot of agreement in academic or theatrical circles. But if he feels the play has all these faults why does he replicate them in his own reconstruction of Shakespeare’s great work. This performance crept along, a bit more pace and some of its weaknesses might not have been so obvious. Here, like Mike Pearson in his early days, Davies and Smith seem to have become more preoccupied with the manipulation of their multi media accessories than with making good compelling theatre. Someone, in the dark, filming their own feet walking about is now pretty old hat by Chapter standards. The only connection I could discern between this piece and the original was the use of Shakespeare’s words. The actors actually spoke the verse quite well, but to almost no purpose. Stage stripped back to its bare walls, a large open apartment, so open that even the lavatory seat is visible, but thankfully never used. Occupied by two young men and two young women. The actors, Nick Chambers, Matilda Leyser, Eric MacLennan and Niam McGrady amazingly managed to convince us that they were real people in this very unreal situation. I read, somewhere, maybe it was in another revue that they had all gathered there to commit suicide. Well, I didn’t get that message and events didn’t bear out the theory anyway. One girl demonstrated a lot of sexual provocation trying to intervene herself between the two young people in the Romeo and Juliet roles. Juliet or is it Matilda takes the poison draught from Friar Lawrence and really poisoned herself permanently with it. Romeo strangles the other female character, for no reason, then Friar Lawrence persuades him to kill himself. This activity could have added up to a sharp artistic observation or comment of some kind but on this occasion I felt that it lamentably failed to do so. A tough innovative company like Volcano will not please many of the people much of the time, they’ve created a lot of innovation and excitement in the past and I feel sure they will again. They do have the right to fail. The production was a legitimate exploration of their theme by Smith and Davies but as a work of art it just didn’t add up, come together or make any real impact. |
Reviewed by: Michael Kelligan |
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