13 OBJECTS: Touring

13 OBJECTS: Howard Barker
The Wrestling School on Tour
Runs: 2h 40m: one interval
Review: Rod Dungate at Birmingham Rep, 16 October 2003
Info: www.thewrestlingschool.com

Environmentally friendly Barker recycling ideas
I see a lot of plays: many are tragic tales, o thers paint bleak landscapes. Mostly I'm uplifted in some way by the experience my eyes opened to new aspects of the world around me. I can't think I've ever felt that I've been beaten into a comatose state by an iron bar until I saw 13 Objects.

Barker opts for a form he's used before a chain of mini-plays loosely linked by theme. In this case much of the work is monologue or near-monologue. The presentational style of these creates a virtually impenetrable wall of words that beats you into submission until around play 8 or 9 you're mentally crying out 'No more, please! I can't take any more.' I wouldn't mind so much if there were illuminating insights to be gained, but inside each of these playlets, for the most part, is a simple, even banal, idea. It just appears deep: a sort of intellectual theatre for the thinkingly challenged.

Having said this, the overarching concept is promising a world reminiscent of 1940s but disjointed and sinister. The opening play (A LONELY SPADE) is intriguing too: an executioner forces two prisoners to dig their graves while he searches in their actions for purity and dignity in death. INVESTOR'S CHRONICLE in which a millionaire destroys a Holbein to protect it from becoming a mere commodity to be bought and sold for profit is deliciously ironic. BLIND PREJUDICE, on the other hand, which explores 'vision and perception' at an opticians is so obvious it could have been lifted from a schools workshop. CRACKED LENS questions whether a camera liberates or imprisons photographer and photographed and is truly interesting.

Barker's characters seem to be imprisoned by a paranoia manacled by their own out-of-control thoughts (which brings us back to the wall of words.) Barker (who directs) opts for an intoned, distanced style of presentation. It has an unfortunate air of the portentous about it, sometimes leading to the faintly ridiculous. The fabulous Victoria Wicks declaiming, slowly, perfectly articulated to her 'drummer' 'I showed you my arse' produced gales of laughter from a large University group: it's not a very funny line, in many ways it's sad. You just don't know where you are! But perhaps that's what Barker's after.

Company
Justin Avoth
Sarah Belcher
Jason Morell
Sean O'Callaghan
Victoria Wicks

Director: Howard Barker
Setting: Tomas Leipzig
Costume: Billie Kaiser
Lighting: Helen Morley
Sound: Paul Bull

2003-10-17 10:37:57