GERTRUDE THE CRY: Barker, Wrestling School on Tour
GERTRUDE THE CRY: Howard Barker
Wrestling School, on Tour
Runs: 2h 40m, one interval
Review: Rod Dungate, Birmingham Rep, 06 November 2002
Intriguing, fascinating scientific dissection in front of you: frustrating, mysterious.I find Howard Barker plays among the most intriguing yet frustrating of theatrical events. Just as you begin to think you have a hook on a production, something happens to frustrate your line of thinking. Perhaps this is Barker's aim: typically for Barker, if this is true, his aim is both questionable and valid.
In GERTRUDE THE CRY Barker sets out to explore Gertrude's sexual nature. Gertrude is in the centre of the play she achieves her power through her sexuality but, you sense, she is also imprisoned by it. She wants men, men want her, other men and women want her to want other men. It is a vicious, inescapable cycle a relentless search for love and equally relentless failure to find it. We learn, in a haunting image in the second half, that (the now dead) Hamlet had plans to build Elsinore out of glass so that love would be on show: we, in the audience, though, know that in their world sex is overt and love always clandestine.
This is a bleak message, but the world Barker creates is bleak. The poison is in the air, you can taste it. There is no comfort for us, the actors do not create characters that we believe in, that draw us into the drama. Rather they demonstrate the characters to us, keeping us at a distance, making us view the play as a scientific experiment. We note with interest the clang as Barker's poetry collides with his pornography: we smile dryly at his humour 'a Dutch musician a bald man with too many teeth.'
Victoria Wicks is outstanding as Gertrude. She is beautiful with her statuesque body, but her angular, febrile nervousness puts us on edge. We see why she is attractive to the men but we do not want her ourselves, we are set free to be voyeurs. Within the extraordinary (and demanding) acting style Barker has developed there is not a weak link in the team. Sean O'Callaghan's anguished Claudius, Jason Morell's self-effacing servant Cascan (feel the turmoil within), Jane Bertish's Isola (by turns weak and strong) and Emma Gersch's tragic Ragusa are all specimens to be dissected in front of us. Justin Avoth's Mecklenburg changes remarkably from child to man. And what a joy of a performance from Tom Burke as Hamlet. Sane, mad, boy, man, vulgar, vile, attention-seeking, aristocratic, autocratic it's all there in this character that changes as rapidly as the colours on a bubble.
Barker allows the play to become slack as it moves into the fourth quarter, though, it becomes repetitative here and we wish it to wind up. Terrific black and white design, and particularly effective are the hats quite remarkable (made by Jack Britton).
But at the end of the day I'm still wondering, should I be so completely unchanged emotionally or intellectually and that's why I find it frustrating.
Gertrude: Victoria Wicks
Claudius: Sean O'Callaghan
Cascan: Jason Morell
Hamlet: Tom Burke
Isola: Jane Bertish
Ragusa: Emma Gersch
Albert: Justin Avoth
Director: Howard Barker
Design: Caroline Shentang
Lighting: Mike Gunning
Costume: Billie Kaiser
Sound: Paul Bull
2002-11-07 20:49:16