THE CHAIR WOMEN. To 26 November.

London/Tour

THE CHAIR WOMEN
by Werner Schwab translated by David T Hale

Scarlet Theatre at Riverside Studios To 31 October then tour to 26 November 2004
Tue-Sun 8pm (Riverside Studios)
Runs 1hr 15min No interval

TICKETS: 020 8327 1111
www.riversidestudios.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 October

Schwab's Holy Mothers gets a new title and a techno upgrade.Three mature, religious-minded women sit watching the Pope on TV, talking about their loves, and in the case of Mariedl her prowess as a bare-hands toilet-cleaner, retrieving fantastical things from round the neighbourhood U-bends. Werner Schwab combines comic and sordid elements in a grotesque parade of complacent chatter, where religious faith exists on a separate plane from the workaday.

It's not enough for director Katarzyna Deszcz, who turns these lives into a wilderness of media mirrors. She subtitles the piece A Reality Theatre Show', and the three women's conversation tails into a (male) TV performer singing a luridly ridiculous song, projected on two wide video-screens which stand for their television with its parade of the programmes and adverts they consume, and which consumes their lives as they talk around or over it.

Their own reality occasionally comes to the foreground, usually as an argument. Then it enters camera-world. As they sit or move they're caught on video by one of a team who seem to have invited themselves into the women's world. It could be a metaphor, people viewing their lives mentally as TV. Or it could show we no longer even notice let alone fear the camera.

So when their conversation is repeated in abridged and frantic form by three young women who have been keenly videoing the trio, perhaps we see reality' edited, distorted then lapped up by its subjects, or a new generation repeating their predecessors' ways.

In reality we don't notice the cameras in our lives. Having laughed at the characters' quainter moments on screen we then find ourselves projected in candid camera postures, gawping, scratching, sleeping. Why?

I saw the show with a large college group, so delighted with these pictures of friends and teachers their laughter drowned anything happening on stage. Usually, there'd be a more subdued reaction which might take us elsewhere. But this performance it showed that camera and screen entertain, but the intrusion of reality into TV points up how different they are. It might not be Deszcz's intention. But that's what happens when you work with amateurs.

Erna: Jasmina David
Grete: Joanna Brookes
Mariedl: Grainne Byrne
Actress: Abbey Norman
Actress: Dulcie Lewis
Actress: Nina Fog
Video Singer: Ronnie Golden

Director: Katarzyna Deszcz
Designer: Andrej Sadowski
Lighting: Mark Dymock
Sound/Composer: Nigel Piper
Video: Gavin Quinn, Aedin Cosgrove
Movement: Carmelle McAree
Assistant designer: Louise Emmott

2004-10-22 08:57:07