SOUTERRAIN. To July 2007.
Tour.
SOUTERRAIN
by Bill Mitchell and Mercedes Kemp.
Wildworks Tour to 17 September 2006 then June/July 2007.
Runs 1hr 50min no interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 August in Colchester.
Exploration of how far love can go.
Army officer Orpheus returns from war to the celebrations his family, members of the local gentry, have organised. But love for Eurydice consumes him. Amid their mutual intensity, as he’s happily washing, comes her sudden death and his journey to the underworld to recover her
Is love stronger than death? Mortality certainly gets the bigger look-in here. But love survives, its forward drive contrasting Death’s controlled, dry humour. Beginning in the garden behind an art gallery (in Colchester – physical details and the community performers and musicians around the core cast differ with each location), death comes by mistake. Orpheus is still happily washing as his beloved, and her love-letters, are blown apart.
Underworld Hades is spread over 3 floors of a nearby, derelict department store, On the way, 2 women reflect aspects of love: passion and dish-washing. Once arrived, audience members write on luggage labels something they’d wish to remember or forget, as the performance becomes an installation, with objects forming fragments from lives, often smashed or aged.
Alongside supermarket-style announcements, there’s an in-store demonstration of removing human organs, and Orpheus’ chance to recover Eurydice, providing he never looks at her.
Though Souterrain’s underworld strangely moves upstairs from ground-floor, the ghostly void of delivery bays and stripped-rooms creates an aptly edgy otherness. There’s eeriness in a cabinet of 12 clocks, all lined up to 12, while voices singing across empty spaces set off hope with desolation.
At best, the love/death conundrum is powerfully explored, as in the lovers’ inability to deny themselves the sight of each other. And, as Eurydice’s finally borne away amid sadness, new love bursts into life.
Yet, while key moments (like Persephone persuading Hades to offer the lovers a second chance) pass quickly, the shop-as-Hades ingenuity, with its punning humour, has too little compulsive content. It expresses the idea of hell as waiting around, and makes the open-air inviting, but loses dramatic momentum
Wild-works share personnel and stylistic features with Cornish neighbours Kneehigh Theatre. If this piece had a more disciplined structure it could be a powerful love/death partner to Kneehigh’s splendid Tristan and Iseult.
Eurydice: Anna Lindgren.
Orphee: Paul Portelli.
Death: David Greeves, Alhoucin Djahra.
Hades: Roger Delves-Broughton.
Persephone: Nicola Rosewarne.
Private Ari: Steve Jacobs.
Sergeant Hermes: Samuel Gardes.
Autopsy Patient/Chorus Leader: Heidi Dorschler.
Directors: Bill Mitchell, Nicola Rosewarne.
Designer: Sue Hill.
Lighting: Tony Simpson.
Composer/Musical Director: Colin Seddon.
Composer: Adrian Freedman.
Assistant director/Assistant designer: Myriddin Wannell.
2006-08-10 13:08:08