GOSPELS OF CHILDHOOD: THE TRIPTYCH To 2 October.

London.

GOSPELS OF CHILDHOOD: THE TRIPTYCH
songs gathered and recomposed by the Company.

St Giles Church/The Pit (Barbican) To 2 October 2009.
Tue-Fri 7pm.
Runs 3hr 40min Two intervals.

TICKETS: 0845 120 7550.
www.barbican.org.uk/bite.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 September.

Strange, remote, intense. Beautiful and varied.
“Do Something Different” is the Barbican’s motto. Here they might add ‘Go Somewhere Different’ as the three parts of Teatr Zar’s Gospels of Childhood have audiences traipsing between St Giles Cripplegate (across the Barbican’s lake) and the Pit, where the central act is played.

It means two longish intervals, but it’s an important element of this Trilogy, for which the term ‘music theatre’ is inadequate. Grave and dignified chants dominate the outer acts, with their aptly ritualistic mood. The first section, Gospels of Childhood: Overture uses New Testament motifs - the contrasting female characters Martha and Mary, and Jesus’ raising of Lazarus - as a thread for ancient folk music

And the final part, The Calling derives from Anthelli, by Polish poet Juliusz Slowacki. A compound of nationalist revolutionary and Slavic mystic, Slowacki’s subject is about preparing the body for angels to inhabit.

This is also a theatre of extremes. In terms of classic Russian fiction, it’s overdosed Dostoyevsky rather than refined European Turgenev. There’s something of fellow-Polish ensemble Gardzienice Theatre’s energetic physicality. And emphasis on the painful endurance of life. In Overture, desire turns to violence, childbirth is agonising with no consolation.

That one can see, though the grouping seems almost wilfully to deny many spectators a full sight of what’s happening. By Overture’s end (the performers disappear at the conclusion of each stage) the final image is of a newly-dug grave, while circles of candles sway in the air.

By contrast, the middle section seems set in contemporary life. Though it focuses on suicide, with a motif that recurs in the final two sections, of a character seeking hopelessly to climb, often towards a beam of light that’s direct above and falling, there’s the sense of a social existence.

And, in the Pit, there’s lifelike, if energised, movement of chairs and tables. The music takes on popular styles, sometimes accompanying dances – though here too the frenetic falling motif recurs. And there’s a sense of individual lives, rather than general communal experience.

Though to some extent compromised by atmosphere-annulling queuing between sections, Teatr Zar’s work remains an intense, unique experience.

Gospels of Childhood: Overture
Marta/Maria: Ditte Berkeley/Kamila Klamut.
With: Nini Julia Bang, Przemyslaw Blaszczak, Tomasz Bojarski, Alessandro Curti, Jean François Favreau, Aleksandra Kotecka, Jaroslaw Fret, Matej Matejka, Ewa Pasikowska, Tomasz Wierzbowski.

Caesarean Section/Essays on Suicide
Performers/Musicians: Ditte Berkeley, Emma Bonnici, Kamila Klamut, Matej Matejka, Nini Julia Bang, Aleksandra Kotecka, Ewa Pasikowska, Tomasz Bojarski, Jean François Favreau, Tomasz Wierzbowski.

Anthelli: The Calling
Anthelli: Matej Matejka
With: Nini Julia Bang, Ditte Berkeley, Przemyslaw Blaszczak, Alessandro Curti, Jean François Favreau, Jaroslaw Fret, Kamila Klamut, Aleksandra Kotecka, Ewa Pasikowska, Tomasz Wierzbowski.

Project Leader: Jaroslaw Fret.
Lighting: Bartosz Radziszewski.
Music Collaboration: Mariana Sadovska.
Movement Score Collaboration: Vivien Wood.

2009-09-29 01:55:46