THE DRAGON'S TRILOGY. To 13 November.
London/Salford
THE DRAGON'S TRILOGY
by Marie Brassard, Jean Casault, Lorraine Cote, Marie Gignac, Robert Lepage, Marie Michaud
Barbican Theatre To 25 September 2005
17,21,23-24 Sept 5pm
18, 25 Sept 2pm no performance 19-20, 22 Sept
then The Lowry Salford 11-13 November 2005
11 Nov 5pm; 12-13 Nov 3pm
Runs 5hr 30min Three intervals
TICKETS: 0845 120 7511 (£1.85 booking fee)
www.younggenius.org/www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee) (Barbican)
0870 787 5780
www.thelowry.com (Lowry)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 September
From the skies to the underbelly, across a continent and beyond, in wide-scope and detailed focus, this is theatre at top of the game.Ex Machina's well-named. The Canadian production company with its directing deus Robert Lepage, uses the technical machinery of theatre to make magic. But, as the latest version of this ever-evolving piece (first seen in Britain at the ICA in 1987 as a mere 4-hour stripling) shows, it's the human imagination and interest in character that make it feel so rich.
Yet it's far more than a folk-saga with tricks. The Trilogy's complexity is such it's amazing to realise only 8 actors are involved. And the set's simple a bare parking-lot with its booth. From here, across the 76 years spanning the 20th century sightings of Halley's comet, Lepage creates a story where individuals matter while also evoking primary human energies.
Seamlessly unfolding, still seeming freshly original though much of its technical inventiveness has been gobbled up in the ever-expanding world of visual and physical theatre across the last 18 years, the Trilogy is held tight together through its geographical spread and its extended moments of focus on detail in people's lives, by a series of images. These turn the apparently casual into something grippingly significant as life plays its game against these characters.
Focusing on Chinese communities in three Canadian cities, it begins and ends with a scene where the play's 3 languages - Chinese, English, French (simultaneous translation's provided) - announce someone has never been to China. There's always the unknown, more to discover. In the scene framing the whole action an old Chinaman searches a bare parking-lot and finds a glass globe. From there, we're whisked into 1910 Quebec. Space is a recurrent theme. An airport souvenir seller in 1985 uses the parking-booth (by then it's had multiple ingenious uses) feels trapped by an ardent pilot admirer, who trails the skies.
The opening also speaks of digging below the surface, to what was once on this parking-lot. And the action partly ensues from a gambling-den below the Chinese Laundry once on the same site, and a game be it poker, or the Dragon-generating Mah Jong rattled out by bangs on an oil-drum, topped by a barber's chair when the drunken barber bets his shop, then his daughter.
Because of this gambling, a naive girls' game is played out more seriously by life. Hopes sour; a dreamed-of child is brain-damaged by disease. In a moment as starkly economic as any the Nun who takes her into care transforms into the child; later the care's seen as less than lifelong. There's repeated ironic counterpointing: flashing lights celebrate a model's body or take disease-revealing X-rays, touch-typing instructions parallel an exposition of the human anatomy.
Someone says the Dragon is what we must destroy in ourselves.Fortunately, this epic of the individual in the world, built with rich theatrical economy, remains undestroyed. The Dragon's Trilogy is one of 20th century theatre's finest achievements and its continued production an opportunity to be seized.
Cast:
Sylvie Cantin, Jean Antoine Charest, Simone Chartrand, Hugues Frenette, Tony Guilfoyle, Eric Leblanc, Veronika Makdissi-Warren, Emily Shelton
Director: Robert Lepage
Designer: Jean-Francoise Couture, Gilles Dube, Vano Hotton
Lighting: Sonoyo Nishikawa, Louis-Marie Lavoie, Lucie Bazzo
Image Design: Lionel Arnould
Music: Robert Caux, Jean-Sebastien Cote
Costume: Marie-Chantale Vaollancourt, Sylvie Courbon
2005-09-17 11:03:35