MARE'S NEST. Station House Opera. To 22 December

London
MARE'S NEST
Station House Opera

South London Gallery To 22 December 2001
Runs 1hr 20min No interval

TICKETS 020 7703 6120
Review Timothy Ramsden 4 December

Fantasy and reality played out in a fascinating juxtaposition of stage and screen.

Let's be clear: the performers of Station House Opera do not sing. Nor do they play instruments. Nor, indeed, do they drive trains. What they do, and have done for twenty years, is – well, perform.

Sometimes this is on a large-scale. But Mare's Nest follows from their previous (and still touring) show Roadmetal Sweetbread in being on a more domestic scale and playing off live action against video images of the two performers. Occasionally the video copies live action (or vice versa). More often it is time-lapsed, or the two counterpoint each other.

Some early moments in the new piece recall Roadmetal in that everyday actions on stage are set against wish-fulfilments in the screen version of characters' relationships. But these dreams are now as much, or more, sex than violence orientated. And there's an interplay of four characters. While the two men spend much of the time running, sitting, standing, staring in degrees of anxiety or simply preparing table settings, the two women are far more emotionally active. Dressed in lookalike dresses that might be out of Vogue circa 1950, one is fair, the other dark. Wild fantasies of naked males adorned with feathers inhabit their screen life. The dark damsel changes into shiny black dominatrix getup on stage.

But there's another kind of doubling up going on. Mare's Nest is built to play in art galleries such as its current Peckham Road venue. Audiences mill around the edges as they might at an exhibition. Except the interest is focused on the floor space, not the walls. And that playing area is divided into two by a wall with a projection screen on either side. So there are four different versions of events at any time; one on each screen, plus one being played out live in each half of the performance space.

The result is, there are always images and events out of sight. Some aspects of the characters' lives remain unknown. Any two audience members, though free to choose and change their standpoint, will end up seeing different shows. The result is deliberately frustrating, provocative and stimulating. And unlike anything else in theatre today.

Company:
Katye Coe
Susannah Hart
Julian Maynard-Smith
Mem Morrison

Video: Tony Pattinson

2001-12-05 01:16:08