METAMORPHOSES & ELEKTRA. To 11 February.

London

METAMORPHOSES & ELEKTRA
by Apuleius/Euripides

Barbican (Pit) To 11 February 2006
Tue-Sun 7.45pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 February

Brilliant theatre from Poland, demanding acceptance of its own particular style.
Though Poland’s Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practice has been working as ensemble-going-on-commune since 1977, it was 20 years later artistic director Wlodzimierz Staniewski turned the group’s attention from visiting indigenous communities (whose stories they would listen to before responding with their own performance versions) to ancient narratives. This double-bill combines Roman and Greek literary origins.

Metamorphoses derives from ‘The Golden Ass’, Apuleius’ story of a man turned into a donkey. Shades of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Hardly, for Staniewski develops the piece as emblem of the switch from classical deities to Christian God: at one point an actor wields a long pole alternately as Dionysiac phallus and Christ’s cross. Though the piece plays on Apuleius’ Platonism what’s most immediately vivid is the company’s ensemble precision and energy. Groups form and dissolve around a table, figures appear round the backcloth’s edges, a group at the side creates the multiple sounds of a donkey’s mutters and rumblings.

Images tumble over each other, defying cognitive reading at a single sitting but beautiful and original – a swirl of female dancers, for example, made more intense by the vocal and instrumental music dating from the times of the ancient Athenian dramatists to the early Christian era. Music is a key source for Gardzienice’s work and a vital part of the overall dynamic and tonal impact.

For Elektra they go back to the Greeks, but this is no direct account of Euripides. It begins with Staniewski’s illustrated ‘lecture’ on the importance of ancient gossip, leading into enactment of the meaning-laden gestures which have been an important element of stage language until the recent ascendancy of naturalism. These physical ‘attitudes’ recur throughout a radical reworking of the story, incorporating Euripides himself.

At the end, a note says, ‘The Author is then murdered’. Brilliant as Gardzienice’s performances are, thorough as its ensemble interaction, seeing 2 such physical pieces together does leave a doubt that Director exploits (if not actually murdering) Author. Either piece blows the mind theatrically; both together have the mind regrouping to wonder if the furrow they’re ploughing might not become something of a stylistic rut.

Cast:
Mariusz Gotaj, Joanna Holcgreber, Marcin Mrowca, Anna-Helena McLean, Grzegorz Podbieglowski, Anna Dabrowska, Agnieszka Mendel, Julia Bui-Ngoc, Aleksandra Gronowska, Alicja Zmigrodzka, Justyna Jary, Barbara Songin, Alexia Kokkali

Director/Music and Gesture Dramaturg: Wlodzimierz Staniewski

Metamorphoses:
Ancient songs adapted by Maciej Rychty
Lyric ‘You Are Broken’: Howard Brenton

Elektra:
Ancient songs adapted by Maciej Rychty, Anna-Helena McLean
Translation: Jacek Dobrowolski
Animation: Daniel Tumanowicz, Rafal Tumanowicz

2006-02-02 09:41:19