PARTICULARLY IN THE HEARTLAND. To 17 September.

London

PARTICULARLY IN THE HEARTLAND
by The TEAM

bac (Studio 1) To 17 September 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 6pm
Runs 1hr 20min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7223 2223
www.bac.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 August at Traverse 2 Edinburgh

Racing-pulse theatre packs some punches.

Bursting with youth and energy, New York's Theatre of the Emerging American Moment explores - or rampages through - the gap between coastal liberalism and landlocked conservatism. The country that could once boast Bobby Kennedy now votes in George Bush. And though the line from Kennedy to Bush 2 is hardly straight, veering via Nixon through Clinton, it's a trajectory worth a look or two.

The TEAM's devised piece opens with patriotic songs, including an audience join-in of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which fades out around verse 5 (words are supplied for Britishers shaky on other countries' anthems). From here on is a chaotic-seeming riot of images; the revenant Kennedy apart, there's Tracy-Jo, alien in human form, as any immigrant might apear herabouts. She reminds next newcomer, Dorothy, somehow tumbled from a Mexico-bound aircraft, that she, Tracy-Jo, was their first. Not every alien wants to huddle in a mass with fellow-arrivals.

These folk reach the heartland of Kansas (naturally, with a Dorothy around) where they meet some siblings abandoned by their apparently enRaptured parents. Taken by Jesus, anyway, is the auto-explanation of adult disappearances for the biblically-reared.

So far it sounds a typical-enough story. Experimental New York artists telling several dozen audience members nightly what's wrong with 95% of their fellow-nationals then wondering why the earth, or at least the political climate, hasn't moved. But we're assured this team split 50/50 heartlanders and New Yorkers who've never traced their names in the alien corn.

What's more, their title's from a news article pointing out that a new Bush bankruptcy law, which will make recovery from solvency near-impossible, has led to a deadline-busting burst of bankruptcy-filing, "particularly in the heartland". So, as George does a Taliban on his loyal voters, this TEAM explode their high-speed, theatrically graphic images and lean lines of dialogue. There are a few quiet moments, like one of the sons earnestly telling his visitors that the Bible is fact. But such moments soon pass in the zipping strip of images born of improvisations that seem to have been more energetic than selective.

This is theatre for quick-cut image assimilation rather than crossword or Sudoku calculation. Its rapid fire can hit or miss, and at times seems to assume scattergunning is fine as it strikes targets sometimes.But you've gotta love a young company that ends its final Edinburgh show by asking if anyone can help them transport their set down to London.

Cast and credits to follow

2006-09-15 18:02:55