TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! To 23 May.

London

TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (PHEDRE)

The Wooster Group at Riverside Studios (Studio 2) To 23 May 2002
8.15 Mats 11,16,18, 21 at 3pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval

TICKETS 020 8237 1111
Review Timothy Ramsden 10 May

Crammed with invention, performed with elan, here's a classical reworking that brings passion down to earthiness.A birdie, the featherlight piece knocked between two badminton players, gets a tough thwacking by Theramenes and Hippolytos early in the Woosters' latest visiting production. It sounds even worse-punished thanks to the high-tech sound-smashes and rhythms covering this hectic scene.

But it's nothing to what Kate Valk's Phedre goes through. Collapsing at first hit in a gentle game with her attendant Oenone, she's demented by desire for her son-in-law Hippolytos. And when husband Theseus is reported dead her self-control breaks completely. After the healthy opening section of Hippolytos' game, there's a long sick section in which Phedre, her beauty on the edge of middle-age, desire scratching away at dignity - as her hands madly scrape over her breasts - is destroyed by love.

And this is no classically noble, ill-fated passion. Clambering on to a commode-throne, she's fuelled by enema-inserted drugs – timing a shot as she clutches Hippolytos' unwilling body to her.

Throughout, words - often spoken by an onstage narrating 'Reader' - are ironed emotion-flat or amplified with momentary time-delay. The impact's to point up the distance between speech and the physical language: Phedre's agony, Hippolytos' laddish unawareness: characters are, theatrically, out of themselves.

Into this emotionally anarchic court strides the thought-dead Theseus, a mighty muscled monarch, well aware of his physical prowess and feeling calmly entitled to call a god's revenge on Hippolytos, once he's been fed the malicious news his son's raped Phedre.

Alongside sound technology, there's video projection. Venus not only calls the shots live, but in a separate video incarnation observes from on high. Characters' nether parts are screened in counterpoint with their live upper bodies. Buttocks and genitalia are glimpsed – as the characters expose their physical health and its ever-present twin, diseased desire.

Early on, too, video makes Phedre's torment clear, as her feet try-on then reject pair after pair of shoes. This is someone no longer comfortable with herself, in appearance, image or person.

It's the consistent vitality of responses to the basically flat script, and the dis-ease between words and physicality that raise this piece above the gimcrack gimmickry of lesser techno-theatre and re-create a classic story in modern terms, extending without betraying its sweep. That, and the company's disciplined ensemble playing.

Hippolytos: An Fliakos
Theramenes/Reader: Scott Shepherd
Oenone: Sheena See
Phedre/Songs: Kate Valk
Theseus: Willem Dafoe
Venus/Referee: Fiona Leaning
Marker 7/Songs: Koosil-ja Hwang
Marker 4: Dominique Bousquet
Video Venus/Songs: Suzzy Roche

Director: Elizabeth LeCompte
Text: Paul Schmidt
Additional Text: Euripides (Hippolytus), IBF Laws of Badminton
Dramaturgy: Jim Dawson, Dennis dermody
Set: Jim Findlay
Lighting: Jennifer Tipton
Sound: John Collins, Geoff Abbas, Jim Dawson, Iver Findlay
Sound Consultant: Dan Dobson
Video: Philip Bussman, J. Reid Farrington, Tara Webb
Video Totems: Ruud van den Akker
Video Software Solution: Production Designer software
Music: David Linton
Costumes: The Wooster Group, Elizabeth Jenyon
Badminton Master: Chi-Bing Wu

2002-05-12 13:42:31