ZERBOMBT. To 11 November.

London.

ZERBOMBT
by Sarah Kane translated by Nils Tabert.

Barbican Theatre To 11 November 2006.
Tue-Sat 7.45pm.
Runs 2hr 5min No interval.

Tickets: 0845 120 7511.
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 November.

Cold play in icy production.
Sarah Kane’s debut play was a cold and brutal experience in the remorseless close-up of the Royal Court’s tiny Theatre Upstairs back in 1997. In the larger Barbican space, it provides another example of Euro-style alienation. Isolated on the large stage, Jan Pappelbaum’s hotel-room set, its neutral veneers and large window-space like a failure of an interior designer’s imagination, both reflects the anomie of the city around and isolates its 2 occupants from their environment.

Their relationship is a bad taste set-up. Cynical journalist Ian is racist, homophobic and there to sexually exploit young Cate. Her slow-working mind should make this easy but she has a quietly assertive way, laughing when he expects sexual attention from her sandwich-chewing mouth, dutifully masturbating him, then combining food and expressionless consideration in bringing him food.

By this time their enclosed relationship has been blown apart by the culmination of Ian’s fears and phobias as a soldier erupts into the room, holding them at gunpoint. Assuming Ian is an enemy, though without caring why, this trooper seeks food, then talks of his military experiences, before cannibalistically attacking him, turning the motif of Cate’s eating into the devouring effect of war, which can feed on body or soul.

Thomas Ostermeier’s production, from Berlin’s Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz, plays throughout with eerie stillness. Though the English supertitles are clear, the often calm, strangely quiet speech, demands attention. Emotion has departed, leaving sensual urgings or accepted inevitability. This neutrality, the whiteout of personality, both leads to and finds its final expression in meaningless, remorseless war.

So the white-flash explosions and sudden crumbling of the room, leaving Ian and Cate in a vulnerable void, are the culmination of their different forms of disengagement. Yet Ostermeier’s beautifully played production catches a sense of residual hope and survival in all three characters. Over a third of a century ago, in Peter Brook’s production US, Glenda Jackson suddenly screamed the wish that the Vietnam war would invade British gardens. Kane and Ostermeier show that Theatre of Cruelty can work just as devastatingly through quiet, calculated surface restraint.

Ian: Ulrich Muhe.
Cate: Kathatina Schuttler.
Soldier: Thomas Thieme.

Director: Thomas Ostermeier.
Designer: Jan Pappelbaum.
Lighting: Urs Schonebaum.
Music: Malte Beckenbach.
Costume: Almut Eppinger.
Dramaturg: Marius von Mayenburg.

2006-11-10 02:13:32