VODOU NATION. To 14 August.
Tour
VODOU NATION
by Brett Bailey Music and Lyrics by RAM
Tour to 14 August 2004
Runs 1hr 40min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 July at Oxford Playhouse
Back the beat rather than assess the story in this energetic music-theatre.Haiti is home to Vodou, and as projections before each act tell us, a place that's suffered chronic oppression. White settlers eliminated the original inhabitants, restocking with African slaves. In 1804 Haiti became the first modern Black republic. But trouble didn't stop there, as this multi-media shout of fury, hope and joy vibrantly displays.
A gallery of human and supernatural characters explore the country's history through dance and movement on stage while a heftily amplified army of keyboards and percussion provide compulsive melody and beat, including onomatopoeic whip-lashings. A complex of Vodou spirits is invoked.
Exuberant performances help excuse the cartoon simplicity of ideas. A devil-dancer driving back a boatful of emigrants to Miami, the graphic of a figure rising demon-like with an array of automatic weaponry, aren't there to argue a case, but to contribute to a sense-bashing montage of myth and image.
Who would need to be told these things, while being assumed able to pick up the iconography of image, costume and movement? Politically, there's little said imperialism, genocide and dictators are bad. Yes, but alas for this show's heart, they are both more concrete and more forceful than its dramatic expression of positives.
It all works better as techno-ritual, masked and costumed figures moving in front of film, with freeze-frame sequences, and compute-generated images so bright they acquire a sinister super-reality. Again, however optimistic the ending, the shanty-town buildings and old cars by the roadside remain from the start.
Happily, the music raises spirits enough to make you want it to work as more than a statement of the obvious. Maybe it does anyway to those closely acquainted with Haitian affairs. But a show for performance outside the country needs to fill in more and not only in a £4 programme.
Still, by the curtain-call who's counting the arguments? The rhythms have taken over, exploding in an extended parade that's worth the ticket price alone. As people who haven't paid for a ticket are given to saying; this time they might be right.
Priestess: Dieuvela Etienne
Anakaona: Lunise
Panther/Devil/Angel: Pierre Daniel Jules
Panther: Anselme Hindrick
Devil/Haitian/Panther: Jimmy Diligent
Devil/Angel: Emmanuel Jules
Devil/Mermaid/Haitian/Coffin Babe: Marie Carline Personnat
Slave who incarnates Ogou: Daniel Brevil
Slave/Mermaid/Haitian/Coffin Babe: Johane Germain
Slave who incarnates Baron Samedi: Menahem Laurent
Directors: Brett Bailey, Caroline O' Connor
Designer: Brett Bailey
Lighting: Malcolm Rippeth
Sound: Mic Pool, Glen Massam
Choreographer: Carol La Chapelle
Haitian Dance Consultant: Emerante de Pradines
Assistant designer/lighting: Guy Nelson
Assistant choreographer: Erol Josue
2004-07-12 00:14:57