Inferno/Purgatorio/Paradiso - Romeo Castellucci

Inferno/Purgatorio/Paradiso

Romeo Castellucci

Societas Raffaello Sanzio

http://www.raffaellosanzio.org/

Spill Festival 2009

http://www.spillfestival.com/index.php?plid=4

at Barbican Theatre

Presented as three separate events – Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, Romeo Castellucci has dismantled, exposed and transformed Dante’s epic text into a truly lived experience.
Using a profoundly visual style, Castellucci creates a deeply unsettling world forcing you into a hauntingly beautiful nightmare, engaging all your senses in an experience you are unlikely to forget. This is highly visceral theatre, full of provocative experiences not for the faint-hearted.

Inferno traditionally tells the epic tale of a struggle between heaven and hell, between God and the devil and between the living and the dead. Castellucci transports this story to the here and now, placing into question the future of humanity.

Depicting images of family life, Purgatorio is uncomfortably set in a fraught domestic space where the use of vivid imagination protects against a tormenting reality.
In an intimate installation, Paradiso creates the ultimate frame where small groups of viewers are sent on a journey to try and find paradise.

Credits:
Direction, set design, lighting and costumes by Romeo Castellucci
Original music by Scott Gibbons
Choreography by Cindy Van Acker and Romeo Castellucci

The work of Romeo Castellucci and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio is considered by artists and audiences worldwide to be highly influential in contemporary performance. Having created a new non-narrative theatre, a visual language that directly challenges traditional forms, Castellucci’s visionary work is uncompromising and always surprising. Making impressive large-scale work that questions our entire human condition, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso has a company of over 60.

Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio has previously been presented in London as part of LIFT; Tragedia Endogonidia at Laban (2004), Genesi at Sadler’s Wells (2001) and Giulio Cesare at Southbank Centre (1999), also at Battersea Arts Centre withBuchettino (2001).

Having been performed as part of the Festival D’Avignon 2008, this is the UK premiere of Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (bite09 SPILL Festival of Performance) and one of the few opportunities to see the complete trilogy performed together.

Inferno

"Inferno" with each of these digits displayed back-to-front 

gatewaying out to us: it is us who are in this hell. each united 

letter is spluttering white light and soundscape of electrical 

shorting and buzzing is loud and abrasive.

throughout this piece the sound provides its centre moving 

through dangerous electrical sounds and loud noises of 

violence to choral sweetness.

one by one each of the "Inferno" units are removed leaving 

only the framing " " which remain for the duration at each 

side of the stage.

Romeo Castellucci comes on stage, announces who he is 

and is dressed in protective soft armour as eight large 

alsatian dogs are brought on and and chained across the 

front of the stage. loud barking offstage and by the dogs 

in front of us. one by one three dogs run on to the stage 

an attack Romeo, holding on to him. we have to take the 

image of aggression and animal attack while filtering out 

the happy tail wagging by the dogs.

a large black cube slowing arrives in the centre of the stage, 

a huge black sail billowing above it. the black drapes are 

pulled up to reveal a cubed crèche of toddlers happily encased 

and playing.

Andy Warhol walks slowly on with a polaroid, takes a picture of 

us, turns to look at the children, turns back to us and slowly 

falls in on himself.

The children are re-covered and removed, a shiny skull is left 

behind which Andy Warhol takes and places beneath a huge 

mirrored swinging wall, which lowers slowly on to break it like 

a nut.

A boy with a basketball, each bounce amplified to terrifying 

sounds, a sense of something else behind him

A great sea of people with their different coloured clothes 

slowly pout across the stage, fall down and wash as one 

mass backwards while differently aged individuals step 

forward to hold the ball replacing the boy at the front. the 

final older woman appears to greedily eat the ball 

accompanied by sickening sounds of gluttonous eating.

And so it drifts through a series of images, always slowed 

and certain and seemingly endless: 

a series of loving tableaux replaced later by a series of 

mimed throat slashings, the slow climb one by one on to 

the returned black cube, then the arms spread wide in 

some sort of universal supplication only to fall backwards, 

again and again, backgrounded by a projected list of 

Andy Warhol's works with their dates, a back projection 

of the names of deceased members of Societas that 

seemed sentimentally discordant with the rest of the piece, 

a grand piano is set alight and we watch it burn

a white horse the arrives as the sea of people are rewound 

slowly back from whence they came to then be poured 

over with vivid red blood.

and then the return of Andy Warhol to take another 

polaroid of us and then to disappear into the wreck of 

a smashed car.

somehow while it is all interesting enough the 

accumulative effect is of a scenographic hypermarket 

with the chance to view what's hot in this season's range 

- a bit too look at me look at me. but a treat for all 

that to get theatre this different from our more 

usual literary plays...

Purgatorio

Paradiso

after a long queue we are let in to the space to see a huge 

dazzlingly white cube structure, a small entrance in one 

corner into another smaller white light cubed space, 

around black hole entrance into darkness. inside this final 

space is first the sound of falling water and as eyes adjust 

we can see we are in a larger black space with a waterfall 

cascading down the back wall. there are other sounds too 

and looking up we see the naked upper torso of a man at 

the top of the waterfall apparently struggling - to free 

himself? to communicate? - evidently unhappy and caught 

in this perpetuity, and yet dangerously precarious suspended 

above this black waterfall: misery in his stuckedness but were 

he to get himself free the drop would destroy him. 

this is an apparently small piece but absolutely perfectly formed 

- the fusion of image and sound burn a permanent imprint so 

that - unusually for me - i can still easily re-summon up the 

remembered pictures days afterwards. this is a vision of life 

ever after that is oppressive in its small stuck foreverness, 

somehow all the more plausible for its absence of fire and 

brimstone or colour and movement. a superbly realised perhaps 

even heightened by our having to make a special trip to the 

barbican and queue for some time for this 5minute moment.

*** the two gentlemen of verona (nos do morro)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Nós do Morro

http://www.nosdomorro.com.br/eng/institucional.htm

The Pit

bite08

http://www.barbican.org.uk/news/artformnews/theatredance/nos-do-morro

The Barbican brings the Brazilian theatre company Nós do Morro to London for the first time with its production of Shakespeare’s comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona directed by Gutti Fraga. The production was originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of the Complete Works festival in 2006 where it received a one-off performance following collaboration with Cicely Berry and now comes to the capital for 11 performances. Switching effortlessly from comic to serious, the energetic young company infuse the text with song, movement and capoeira in a beautifully uncomplicated production. Location and mood are indicated through the use of the actors’ bodies and simple props take on a life of their own. The Two Gentlemen of Verona is performed in Portuguese with English surtitles. It is presented in association with People’s Palace Projects.

Nós do Morro (Portuguese for ‘us from the hillside’) was founded in 1986 by Fraga and is based in Vidigal, one of the toughest favelas in Rio de Janeiro. It provides young people from this disadvantaged community an opportunity to experience culture, art and citizenship through the theatre and visual arts. The company has achieved significant public recognition, won several awards and now runs a theatre and cultural centre. It aims to provide training in technical skills and creative work for theatre and cinema and many of its actors have appeared in TV series, soap operas and films including the 2002 award-winning City Of God.

Coinciding with the Barbican run of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Nós do Morro and Theatre Centre present an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest entitled Knock Against My Heart written by Oladipo Agboluaje and directed by Michael Judge. Knock Against My Heart tours the UK from 18 September – 20 November including a run at the Unicorn Theatre from 7 – 18 October.

http://www.theatre-centre.co.uk/index.php?plid=64

What a wonderful joyous funny warm experience was this!

The lights come up in one corner from a blackout to show a tightly clustered group of young performers singing - and instantly we know we are in the company of troubadour players about to make a show for us with just themselves, a few instruments and some motley scraps of cloth they will use for costumes and the many letters that feature through Shakespeare's story. This is his first play and - as with Chekhov's Ivanov - it's great to be able to see so many of the characters and ideas he will recreate again in his later plays: Julia who dresses as man - brilliantly achieved and utterly convincing as a disguise with a stretch of cloth over one eye so attention is grabbed by the disability rather than a sense of recognition - and heads off from Verona to Milan to teach her man how to love (As You Like It); there are balcony scenes (Romeo & Juliet), Julia lists her suitors for her maid to strip of their vanities with gleeful cruelty (The Merchant of Venice), and her initial dismissal of Proteus reminds of Kate and Beatrice; there's a there is even a Friar Laurence.

It is somehow an easy step to accept these young performers as the young lovers – they convey a freshness and vitality that exactly suits Shakespeare’s characters. And something i have never before seen so effectively achieved is the way all the performers step instantly in and away from their characters, so that even those playing leads manage to completely lose every hint of their characters to meld seamlessly into the ensemble. So I found I was even searching for actors who seemed to have disappeared in the chorus scenes, and conversely people I had barely noticed before would suddenly emerge as apparently unmissable large and dynamic presences when they stepped into an individual role.

The staging uses a variety of disciplined simplicity: performers bond together to make human architecture and furniture - seats, walls, doors, headless busts, a balcony, and a dangerous forest is conjured with lighting, a smoke machine and another length of cloth. We get a mimed slow motion duel or contest in the early scenes while Valentine & Proteus are all devoted and true friendship forever more that physically lays out everything the story of these two young Veronese gentlemen will unfold. And we get live music - instrumental and singing - to both move the story on, take us too new places (memorably from Verona to Milan), and to underscore or change the mood.

From start to finish this show vibrates with spirit and exuberance so you feel swept along and caught inside the performers’ zest and drive to bring their story, and yet for all their youthful energy there is nothing amateurish or unfinished and the moments of poignancy and realisation arrive with a crystalline focus that is deeply moving and utterly true. And then just as seamlessly the moment is gone, moved on and we are delighted and laughing again or surfing the story or beaming off the radiant music and movement.
And one more jewel I have to record for permanent remembrance: the performance of the dog is everything this show has encapsulated: truth, humour, discipline, spirit, delight, poignancy, immense fun and quiet understated sadness. Brilliant!
It ends with a final bright song, through which the players take their smiling bows, and then they again converge into their tight and tightly lit ensemble spot - all individuality again extinguished. Blackout and they are gone.

And i'm still glowing from the experience they made for us.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/TwoGentlemenOfVerona#

*** 'lypsynch' (robert lepage)

Lipsynch
Robert Lepage

Directed and co-written by Robert Lepage
Produced by Ex machina/Théâtre sans Frontières
In association with Cultural Industry and Northern Stage
Co-produced by barbicanbite08, Cabildo Insular de Tenerife and Festival TransAmèriques, Montrèal

Written and performed by Rebecca Blankenship (Ada and others), Hans Piesbergen (Thomas and others), Sarah Kemp (Sarah and others), Rick Miller (Jeremy and others), Frédérike Bédard (Marie and others), John Cobb (Jackson and others), Carlos Belda (Sebastian and others), Lise Castonguay (Michelle and others), Nuria Garcia (Lupe and others),

and Written and Dramaturgy by Marie Gignac

This latest ensemble work from Robert Lepage and Ex Machina is an epic panorama linking nine lives spanning seven decades, and spinning stories that are surprising, funny and moving.
As we are taken on a nine-hour journey, we stop off between war-torn Vienna, pre-revolutionary Nicaragua and present day London, encountering people who have lost the power of speech and people for whom speech is the only lifeline.
A dubbing studio to the world of vocal forensics, Lipsynch follows a cluster of interwoven destinies, where each voice is searching for its own identity.
Performance time: 13:00 Running time: Approx 9 hrs/inc 4 intervals and 1 extended meal break
In English, French, German and Spanish with English surtitles.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=7477


Ada
Ada has a big voice. As a soprano. As a mother.
She comes out in concert black and sings Gorecki’s Symphony #3
a woman dies on a plane. her baby is left behind.
With the help of Thomas – a med student fan she happens upon in her trail to find our what has happened to this baby - Ada finds and adopts the baby
Jeremy & Ada move to London. Ada gives Jeremy singing lessons. Jeremy grows up to become a rock singer. Jeremy sings iron maiden’s ‘the number of the beast’ with his rock band.
Jeremy and his girlfriend travel on the Piccadilly line from Covent Garden. His girlfriend videos a sleazy man chasing a couple of women who could be prostitutes. Ada gets on. The girlfriend gets off. Thomas gets on and he and Ada recognise each other – he is living in London, working as a neurologist – as he gets off he asks Ada too call him.
Ada and Thomas get together. They propose a plan to move out to another flat leaving this one for Jeremy and his girlfriend - Jeremy rejects this saying instead he will go to San Francisco to study film.
On the plane he sings the Gorecki - partly in duet with Ada who moves slowly backwards past and away from him. His birth mother appears and walks across the length of the top of the plane towards him finally seeming to present the last part of his song

Thomas
We see a projection of a painting of Doubting Thomas with his finger testing Christ’s wound. Thomas is making a tribute speech about his professor mentor – a man who had been like a father to him and a man who kept belief in both god and science
Thomas tells Marie - his patient and a jazz singer from Montreal - that the surgery to remove her brain tumour may lead to aphasia - another doctor translates this into french for her. Thomas tells her that she may lose her speech but not her voice for a period of time afterwards – so she will still be able to sing but not make words.
Thomas is briefly haunted by the professor
We get a supersize close-up of the face of a dragged up actor miming the interview of an old English grand dame talking about her early training as a speech therapist in Exeter during the war – she keeps losing names. We learn that she helped Ada - now by her side - with a stammer as a child. Fabulously funny and interesting.
Thomas and his partner neurologist have a coffee together in a bizarre off-synch set that makes sensible a film image of them sitting across from each other over a table. She tells him about a quantum physics lecture where the scientists wonders if - as things go into a parallel world when they pass through a wormhole - whether maybe with Alzheimer’s thoughts slip through a similar ‘wormhole’ into another dimension of the brain. Thomas wonders if his memories of his professor appearing to him now as a ghost are going through a similar process.
Thomas & Ada meet at the Soho jazz club to hear the jazz singer sing a bravura version of ‘April In Paris’. It turns out Thomas is getting the shakes and drinking and his relationship with Ada is in trouble. Ada leaves. Thomas gets drunk. Sarah returns, asks him if she could die – she doesn't believe but had dropped to her knees and prayed that afternoon. We see a stunning projection of Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel ceiling painting of the creation, which closes up to just the image of God pointing in much the same way Doubting Thomas had been shown prodding christ’s wound, and then this image of god morphs smoothly into the shape and form of a human brain: God, Thomas tells us, like everything else is a creation of our brain ...
We see Maria's brain surgery: an image of the parts of her brain labelled with letters ‘because every brain is unique and it helps to find their way around it’; and then we see the picture drawings she has to name and hear her lose her words.

Sarah
We first have seen Sarah in the earlier scene on the tube: Jeremy’s girlfriend videoed her looking after her friend being harassed by a sleazy man. She is now in the old speech therapist’s kitchen, smoking and singing silently to ‘do you know the way to San José’’ on the radio. The old lady comes in in her motorised chair and changes the station to the news. Sarah takes her money from the bag that seems to live in the microwave and leaves. Ada arrives and gives the old lady a present.
the kitchen widens to contain a radio studio where we find Sarah, head-phoned up with a male escort, both are being interviewed about their experiences as sex workers: his is boastful and glamorous, hers is hurt and troubled – she has been abused as a child by her stepfather, she has overdosed to get away and into care, she has cut herself their to try and get away from the care worker who is abusing her, she goes from a massage parlour to a street prostitute to support her drug habit. She is not inarticulate but she is utterly out voiced by the male escort who steals the show.
As they are ushered out of the studio Sarah seems to recognise the BBC man who replaces them to read the news in smooth RP
The kitchen comes back together: Sarah back at her cleaning job with the old lady, gets some soup, heats in the microwave (taking the old lady’s bag out first), takes the soup to the old lady and finds she has died. Makes a phone call.
Outside she phones the BBC – asks for Anthony – changed his name – Tony Briggs – leaves her number saying his sister called.
Another radio studio: Tony is recording a story about Narcissus. Sarah arrives and is allowed into the studio …
Sarah and Ada
Tony at the police station

Jeremy
Jeremy in Nicaragua looking for info about his mother – a singer? a nanny?
Jeremy’s film
the launch dinner
blocking the singing lesson scene
the rushes
the singing teacher’s tearful close-up
sex discovered in the trailer and the german’s black eye
the singing teacher’s death scene and maria’s lost voice
Jeremy calls his mother asking if his mother was a prostitute

Marie
Sound technology – overlaying different vocal tracks using laptop – head still bandaged
Sound studio dubbing French onto Jeremy’s film: the singing teacher’s death scene. her first job. she gets the number from Sebastian for louise, who can read lips, to try and discover what her father is saying in old home movie film
Marie at home talking about medication and care for Michelle with her doctor. Louise arrives – translates what she can – banal stuff like “look at the camera” and “what do you think of my new car?” Marie trying to get back the lost memory of the sound of her father’s voice. Louise offers to stay and go through all the film. Marie leaves for her choir rehearsal
Foley studio putting in the sounds for the singing lesson of Jeremy’s film
Choir in the church. Michelle arrives
Sound studio with the voice artist trying out different ‘dad’ voices
Marie is persuaded to voice it and gets the sound of her father being in the room: “of course you will have our father’s voice” Michelle tells her


Jackson
in his French speaking car trying to cancel the rest of his tango lessons because his wife is leaving him
Tony has died under a train – suicide or pushed? a woman has been caught on camera rushing away from the Manchester train platform at Euston His greek secretary turns him down for tango partnering
Interviews voice artist colleagues about him
the police voice expert analyses Sarah’s answer machine message as someone from the north, top teeth that have been replaced, not too big, and with a minor sound that would depress its listeners. she turns Jackson down for tango partnering
Interviews Sebastian who knew Tony well – worked with all his projects, saw him a lot outside of work too. Demonstrates the Tony’s voice sections making rail announcements
Tony’s flat – loads of sleazy home-made porn films. Sebastian calls him to say he’s remembered Sarah’s visit to the studio.
the police voice expert ids the voice on the answer machine and in the BBC prostitute radio show as 100% the same
Tony finds Sarah working the street in Manchester. pretends a breakdown, asks about her, gets her confession: an accident when Tony came after her and found her at the station on her way back to Manchester, they tussle, he steps back, she runs

Sebastian
sound recording studio: Sebastian is conducting a choir of laughers as a background track for a Susan Sarandon movie we hear running. his phone – bad news
at the morgue in his canary islands home town – identified his father’s 4 days dead body – his father’s corpse farts
at his father’s place getting clothes – simon in the closet
the taped obituary announcement being taken round the streets – the neighbours have added their names in as family – S cuts and splices the cassette tape
the wake – body the wrong way round – dentures missing – simon brings in the aunts bearing gifts – Sebastian’s first tape machine and a tape of his father’s stand-up routine

Michelle
Constant noise like snow - whispers you can't ever quite catch - the voices - first as ghostly forms straining to break through the stretched membrane of your mind - then more distinct personalities: a priest, a little girl - beckoning - calling you out.
Michelle finally leaving the hospital - hiding her prescription - finding it to get her ticket out - packing her toys
Michelle at work in 'her' book shop - the first we are outside with her voices, the second inside with her warmth and intelligence and kindness - the book she lends to Guillaume - taking her pills
Michelle at home - a visit from Marie & Thomas - he is now a psychotherapist - she is fierce and eloquent in her rejection of going into another trial and Marie's smothering flattering love - he pleads innocence and instead announces that he & Marie are to marry - Guillaume arrives to return the book
The first in a revival of monday poetry evenings - a spanish poem - then Guillaume rapping with Shmo's beatbox accompaniment - then Michelle because she promised she would if he did - her poem 'and I do not die'. and I cry

Lupe
A cafe. Ada waiting. Jeremy arrives with his infant in a carry-cot: Ada's grandson. Ada gives Jeremy a video: this is your mother

A Nicaraguan cafe. Lupe waitressing. Her businessman uncle arrives with an unpleasant german and his 'wife' in a wheelchair. They sell the idea of lupe going with them to Hamburg to look after the wife and their two children. Out of lupe's earshot she is sold for $600.
A doctor's surgery: Lupe is getting a medical prior to travelling. We hear that her mother died when she was tiny and her father of a heart attack when she was ten. She has high blood pressure but is otherwise healthy. She is fifteen
The doctor taking her a blood while her uncle holds her hand morphs into the german restraining her while his 'wife' shoots her arm with drugs. Then she is raped
She is re-dressed in fuck--me clothes and lined up along a caged bar. In the background a film crew are seen away
Her pimp sets up a deal in a car with Tony Briggs - they drive to a bar and he selects Lupe
Lupe is driven to a hotel room where she meets a filmmaker who pays, says she wants to film her story and gives her her card.
In the car she hands over the money and gets her baby, who she clearly adores. A car accident

The film maker now back at home in montreal with the infant Jeremy. Ada arrives, comforts the crying Jeremy back to sleep, is given the tape of Lupe’s interview - just one of 400 hours of tape this woman has filmed of the voiceless prostitutes she has interviewed - and learns that Jeremy is to be put up for foster parents

Jeremy watches Lupe’s film which we see her tell live - arms back & up and helpless with live film of a man caressing his naked torso superimposed over her - then his and many other hands mauling
Ada returns in her black concert dress and sings again

Robert Lepage / Ex machina: http://www.robertlepage.com/

Theatre Sans Frontieres: http://www.tsf.org.uk/index.php

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/LipsynchRobertLepage

*** 'helium' (slung low)

'helium'
slung low
at barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?id=7613

Bella’s grandfather keeps sending parcels to her. Inside each parcel is a helium balloon… This imaginative installation tells the story of Bella’s quest to discover her grandfather’s hidden past. From the inside of a Lancaster Bomber, to a magic show in 1920s London, we uncover the mysteries concealed by a series of helium balloons.Combining live and digital performance Helium investigates guilt, responsibility and the true meaning of ‘release’. As the performance unfolds in a series of boxes, each audience member has a short adventure of their own.



post script:

the day after seeing this show i open my the box and and take out the helium balloon. and with joy i discover that it is tied with a white ribbon to the storybook of the show. there is a programme inside too. and as i read the story with the remembered images from the show i do have a very special experience. and i am right that there is much density in this story and that i have absorbed only parts of it, and i love this company for anticipating this and giving me the story to find at home and discover fully ...





in the Pit foyer we're greeted by a couple of men in blue overalls from H Removals who check our names, give us a lollipop and a small card inviting us each to a birthday party, and a list of:
Things we'd like you to know;

- close all doors behind you.

- what you save with cheap boxes you'll pay for in breakages.

- that those ignore you aren't being rude it's just that they can't hear you.

- never pack explosives, combustibles, food of any kind, liquids or pets.

- always press the switch before going in. Once.

- pack all boxes to capacity.

- it's cracking to see you.

with love, H. Removals

and then one by one we are met by our H Removals guide, who sits us down and runs us through a very reassuring briefing about what to do and what to expect. Of course I knew when i booked this that i would quite probably be having to manage my bloody claustrophobia, and so it was as i was led from one small room to the next, and this was a lot easier than it might have been thanks to this expert guiding. At the same time the style and tone of this did make me feel like i was supposed to be 5 years old, which was a little unhelpful to my experience of the show. swings and roundabouts then, tricky to get right, and way better to overdo than underdo guiding as we know to our great cost, but perhaps they could relax a bit of the 'we soooo want you to have a great time' approach. a quibble.

so in the first room i am alone with Bella, who is on the phone to her family, in her recently deceased grandfather Max's room. We then hear through the radio Max in conversation with his gargoyle alter ego? twin? nemesis? satanic master? from them i learn that i am an eavesdropper and necessary to Bella being able to get the story of her grandfather's past. There is a strong sense of clues being laid down and a puzzle that i will have to try and solve. this room is intimate and the experience of being alone with a performer in a small room familiar for me after experiencing 'masque of the red death', but it's interesting to notice just how fast i have learned to become easy in this new audience~performance relationship and wonder how differently it plays with different individual audients.

my guide opens the door and - leaving Bella reading her grandfather's book - leads me out from this first room, hands me a box of popcorn, and steers me into a model movie theatre very reminiscent of the ones janet cardiff & george bure miller have made. A film is playing of 'the great Garibaldi or some such a magician, who appears shoots himself when his card guessing trick goes wrong, altho he reappears later saying something i don't remember (i've since re-seen it on the promo video and been reminded that he's saying "course it's frightening. that's the real trick: making what inside outside". meanwhile max and his gargoyle are back in conversation from the speaker box and talking about me and to me and this dominates my interest. There is a sense of more clues being laid out, and instructed to look up i find a joker playing card attached to the ceiling by a sign to 'take this card'. i do. the experience of this room is mostly confusing - maybe i haven't been concentrating enough or have become too distracted between film watching, conversation listening, popcorn munching and realising i can relax enough to know that my claustrophobia isn't getting the better of me. one of the things i do enjoy in all the rooms is that the time in each of them is long enough to get beyond the immediate novelty and begin to immerse in what is happening: in fact i could have enjoyed much longer (so it must have all been successful to have over-ridden my small space panic!)

so to the third room - the belly of a WWII bomber, with with one of the radio ops. this time i've been instructed to put on the headphones and to 'be brave'. the airman is trying to have a radio conversation with a friend called Duffy (martyn is convinced they used his name from the booking, and change it for each person, but i'm not so sure). the airman makes contact with Duffy, tells him that he's going to be a father, loses contact, and once again this is being over scored by the voices of Max and his gargoyle. then the floor falls open to show me film of a plane eye's view of the bombing of Dresden (martyn told me this - i wasn't clever enough to get this specific fact), and from this bombed and burning cathedral leaps into the foreground the gargoyle speaking directly up into our bomber but i'm so busy noticing effect of the trap door appears to have not worked smoothly and wondering if this is all i'm supposed to be being brave about and wishing it was just that bit more convincing that i don't remember what he says (but again from the promo video i've picked up the message "don't leave me behind"). i'm also still feeling under some pressure to solve a puzzle, pass a test, and perhaps this interferes with my focus, but again i think that given more time to become immersed and/or maybe less apparent density of information to be processed from Max and the gargoyle i could have quite fully entered into a belief of this world: there was so nearly the possibility of feeling i am in this bomber in radio silence with this airman whose friend has probably just been shot down.

'harrowing isn't it' says my guide as he takes me to the next room and i feel guilty because no it hadn't been really, although i think perhaps this comment was the key to release me from trying to solve the puzzle and licence me instead to simply bear witness, and this made the last two rooms easier to just be in. The penultimate 'box' is a hospital room, where i come face2face with the gargoyle, dressed as an orderly cleaning up the room, Max's voice as an image across the heart monitor screen. i think i missed important parts of the story in this room, except to pick up that because i - as the eavesdropper - was there still there listening then Bella was still turning the pages of the book in which she was learning this her grandfather's story, and that somehow during the bombing i'd just seen, Max and the gargoyle had become inextricably linked together, and that now that Max was dying the gargoyle was turning back into stone and suffering visibly as this happened. i don't know why Max laughs so maliciously while this happens, and somewhere too i am still bothering away trying to identify whose famous voice Max has (patrick stewart in fact - and a less famous voice would have saved me this distraction).

then the last room is a white space with a moving projection of cathedral arches and stained glass windows. this is the easiest room to just absorb the last of the story - a memory of Max's - that the gargoyle doesn't have because it was the one and only time time Max forgot him - of Bella letting go her helium balloon and it floating free. there is some association being made between the pages of the book of this story now heard and the helium balloons being set free and at last as Max fades away so too can the gargoyle and they can still together float free. and we watch a projection of Bella collecting her grandfather's snowscene and leaving his now packed away room for the last time, Max is finally released from his wartime guilt.

i am led out from the removal box rooms and on the way back to the foyer my guide gives me my own box with my name and inside my own white helium balloon, to go with my lollipop and my joker playing card. so it does nearly all fit: the birthday party was Bella's where she released her helium balloon, the lollipop i decide is simply a toy to help keep me and other anxious eavesdroppers calmed (and actually it works for this - the thought that i could suck it soothes despite the fact that i hate the things). the joker playing card and the suicidal magician remain an enigma for me i'm afraid.

this is a good-hearted and genuine show, warmed hugely by the care and thought that has obviously gone in to making it safe and accessible for us as individual audients travelling through new performance territories. and i love that this company is a diverse group of deliberately mixed artists and this fusion has gone into its devising and performance (just as we aspire so hopefully to do one day). it must be expensive to run because of its low audience numbers and high guiding team. it is limited by the low level of technology - the projections are not as good as we now see them in theatres and galleries, and the sound suffered for me because of the high high precision in janet cardiff & george bures miller's work.


and so from reading later i learn all the details that the above narrative of my experience has troubled over, missed or muddled:

~ the gargoyle is more precisely a grotesque - "a gargoyle spouts water".

~ 'the Great Capaldini''s show is a birthday treat for the eight year old Max, and he is the boy at the centre of the botched card trick. which in fact isn't botched at all but introduces us to Max's propensity to feel intense guilt: it is his fault the card trick has gone wrong. and the magician is not suicidal - this is simply part of the drama of the act.

~ the young airman is Max himself of course and the gargoyle chooses him to leap into from his burning cathedral in his burning city. and his friend Duffy is Duffy and not just Duffy for m duffy and me.

~ the restoration of the dresden cathedral brought no redemption for Max, it did not re-make the gargoyle's home nor offer any passing on for either of them.

~ we are invited to share this story. this is no longer just Max's story for Bella, but for us all to put our faces and names and memories and imaginings to: "just as Bella has my diary, you have what you have just experienced..."



"thank you for coming" the company write on the last page.
thank them for making such a special, wonderful and memorable experience.


but i look forward to what they make next ....
http://web.mac.com/slung.low/Slung_Low/slung_low_home.html


see also composer/sound artist Heather Fenoughty's blog about her making for this show:

www.heather-fenoughty.com/blog/2008/09/21/helium.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/Helium#

*** "black watch" (national theatre of scotland)

friday 20th june 2008
http://picasaweb.google.com/marktrezona/BlackWatch




"black watch"
national theatre of scotland

By Gregory Burke
Directed by John Tiffany
barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=5418


We were on our feet at the end of this- brilliantly realised, brilliantly performed - powerful compelling theatre at its very very best

Barbican Theatre again in traverse
We walk into swirling lights and the pipes - the atmosphere of a military tattoo
At each end are a pair of TV screens showing a billowing Scottish flag
The lights sweep over the stage (parade ground?) and us on each bank of seats facing across from each other.

“Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the Black Watch…”
And out comes Stewarty in civvies talking to us

This show was exceptional in many different aspects- and the combination of all these together:
1- it was told with great care and truthfulness. you felt it really mattered to them to get these guy's stories right, to tell it as it really was for them. And it always felt true and honest all the way thru
2. The performers were all totally believable as soldiers -so much so that i never once found myself thinking ‘who is playing which other roles?’ (the same actor -Michael Nardone - plays both the writer and the sergeant but i didn’t think about this until the curtain call. the men are all completely recognisable from my brief time in the army and this is all the more impressive given that they are required to dance and perform some very theatrical sequences including dance. it all feels completely right- the swearing-every-second-word, the endless waiting around inventing games to stay amused, the constant talk about sex (in the absence of any other way to talk about feelings and share intimacy with each other), the picking on the 'stupid' one who always seems out of sync with the conversation
3 . And then this story is performed with a rich blend of different styles - physical theatre / dance to show the battle drills, the fighting between each other and in the last spectacular sequence of parade ground marching-falling-dying-getting up-marching. We also get singing and one soldier plays the pipes to accompany the removal of their killed buddies after the suicide bomb. We even get the history of the Black Watch and its different uniforms and masters through the ages

The screens are used to show bombing action surveillance camera views (which creates a strong sense of place outside), and football in the bar scenes back home in Scotland. oh and a brief bit of porn.

The traverse works well this time especially with the use of different heights
Also memorable and effective
The red billiard table which is cut through to release the soldiers on watch immediately after the first bar scene; which is then later used as a ‘wagon’ on which five soldiers are contained together forced too close to each other and stuck waiting for backup in transit; the two soldiers sunbathing with their pants around their ankles so they are technically still battle-ready; and the slow-mo on wires death through the explosion of the three soldiers killed by the suicide bomber

Powerful
Compelling
Superbly performed
Everything in this show is got absolutely right

Time Out ****** The Guardian***** The Sunday Times***** Metro***** Evening Standard***** Sunday Telegraph*****
'One of the few shows anywhere in the UK that could be described as perfect; it was a vision of how theatre could be.’ The Daily Telegraph
Multi-award-winning Black Watch received unanimous critical acclaim at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival and on its subsequent Scottish and international tours. Hurtling from a pool room in Fife to an armoured wagon in a war zone, the play is based on interviews conducted by Gregory Burke with former soldiers who served in Iraq. Viewed through the eyes of those on the ground, Black Watch reveals what it means to be part of the legendary Scottish regiment, what it means to be part of the war on terror, and what it means to make the journey home again. A visceral, complex and urgent piece of theatre.


Company
The National Theatre of Scotland exists to build a new generation of theatre-goers as well as reinvigorating the existing ones; to create theatre on a national and international scale that exceeds expectations of what and where theatre can be. The National Theatre of Scotland has no building, so the entire focus is on creating work. Performance is created in great theatre spaces, but also in site specific locations, community halls and drill halls, car parks and forests. The company has won a clutch of awards including a South Bank Show award for Black Watch and a Critics' Circle Award for director John Tiffany.
Gregory Burke also recently won the Best Play Writers' Guild Award for Black Watch.
http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp


Reviews
‘… rich, exciting, humane and moving, and staged with dazzling virtuosity by John Tiffany.’ Evening Standard
'...a glowing ensemble production… worked even better in a reconfigured Barbican...’ The Guardian
'John Tiffany's stunning production....confirms its place as the modern theatre's best piece about British soldiering...' Whatsonstage.com
Reviews from 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival
‘A magnificent piece of social and political theatre. A high point not just of the festival but of the theatrical year.’ The Observer
‘No film could ever match the power and immediacy of this portrait of war; it’s a triumph for the National Theatre of Scotland.’ Time Out ******
‘One of the most exhilarating pieces of theatre seen for years.’ The Guardian*****
‘This wasn’t simply the sensation of the Edinburgh Fringe, but one of the few shows anywhere in the UK that could be described as perfect; it was a vision of how theatre could be.’ The Telegraph*****
‘Not just the hit of the Edinburgh Festival, it was also the most viscerally exciting thing I’d seen there for a decade.’ Sunday Times*****

*** "running the silk road" (yellow earth theatre) @ barbican

wednesday 25th June 2008

"running the silk road"

yellow earth theatre

http://www.yellowearth.org/

at the pit, barbican

http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=6493

Wonderful special show that held me gripped thru every moment
A story told with such honesty and care and belief and humour - tackling the big issues of our times (global warming, china’s exploitation of planet + people, the difficulties of carrying a secular sensibility into fundamentally religious lands, living out multi-cultural relationships) in- ways that were recognisable and true without ever falling into stereotype or platitude or preaching
And unlike last night's “marguerite” this show gave us the personal story alongside he big story - played out as a battle between the gods for domination of the earth using Peking Opera forms. this was coupled this with the book Ken carries with him that lists the strange monsters and creatures - locusts, snakes, dragons, tiger-striped beasts - and what each of these bring with their appearance -deceit, drought, flood locusts -all presented as nightmares emanating out of Ken's fever.
And inside these global battles (which culminate in the earth’s near incineration under a sky of 10 suns that have to be systematically shot down by the archer god to bring us another chance for renewed survival) the personal story of 5 friends from very different backgrounds, all very recognisable as 21st century Londoners, is played out through the journey of Ken's sponsored run along the Silk Road and through the very different difficulties each new land brings

Very special and wonderful on very many levels.

And with a vastly smaller budget leaving “Marguerite” a long way behind

A cast of UK and Chinese performers weave together two theatrical traditions in this enthralling collaboration. In 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics, a group of friends from London set off on an epic journey along the ancient Silk Road trading route to China. Armed only with good humour, they cross the isolated terrain of central Asia, carrying with them an alternative Olympic flame to represent the dangers of global warming. The story of their journey is interwoven with tales from Chinese mythology. Classical actors from Beijing Opera draw on the zaju theatre of the Jin Dynasty, using dance, acrobatics, comic patter and music.

Yellow Earth is an award-winning East Asian theatre company based in the UK. It produces intercultural work that crosses art forms, boundaries and languages. Recent productions have been presented in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chongqing, Northern Ireland, and as part of the RSC's Complete Works series in Stratford. Writer Paul Sirett works extensively for television, radio and film. His most recent production was the Olivier Award-nominated musical The Big Life, which premiered at Theatre Royal Stratford East and transferred to the West End.
Performance time: 19:45
Running time: 90 mins/no interval
In English and Mandarin with English subtitles

Reviews

‘Visually sparkling, morally robust and imaginatively adventurous.’ The Times on Play to Win

"The running battle between Shen Feng's God of Thunder and Yanzhong Huang's Queller of the Flood is an epic tussle of incredible agility, while the cast demonstrate sinuous expertise in the manipulation of various dragons, serpents and giant insects.” The Guardian

“An unusual and ambitious play… an exciting prospect for the audience” Liverpool Daily Post

‘…a show that lacks nothing in its inventiveness in blending East and West.’ Independent

'...delivered with such a touching sincerity...' Independent

"hysteria" (grupo XIX de teatro) at the great hall, st barts hopsital

unfinished blog
thursday 5th june 2008

"hysteria"
grupo XIX de teatro
the great hall, st barts hospital

bite 08, barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=6665

A site-specific performance in The Great Hall at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
This performance takes place in the evocative surroundings of The Great Hall at St Bart’s Hospital. It explores the lives of 19th century women interred in mental institutions, often erroneously, and looks at the connections between their experiences and those of women today.
How have conceptions of abnormality changed?
What unites women across the centuries?
Like ghosts from a former time, the five performers interact with female members of the audience, gently questioning them about their lives. An engaging, tender and charming production.

"troilus and cressida" (cheek by jowl)

unfinished posting






friday 23rd may 2008







"troilus and cressida"



by william shakespeare







cheek by jowl



bite 08 at the barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?id=6491








the company









The Trojan War, the defining legend of western literature, is stripped to its raw heart in Shakespeare’s scathing satire on glory, chivalry and doomed love. After seven years of fighting, the Greeks and the Trojans have reached a stalemate. As each renews its thirst for bloodshed, they discover that heroes and heroines do not only fall in battle. By turns terrifying, hilarious, and passionate Troilus and Cressida will be Cheek by Jowl’s most ambitious, large-scale production to date. This four week run as part of bite08 is the only opportunity to see Cheek by Jowl’s English language work in the UK this year.

The Trojan War, the defining legend of western literature, is stripped to its raw heart in Shakespeare’s scathing satire on glory, chivalry and doomed love. After seven years of fighting, the Greeks and the Trojans have reached a stalemate. As each renews its thirst for bloodshed, they discover that heroes and heroines do not only fall in battle. By turns terrifying, hilarious, and passionate Troilus and Cressida will be Cheek by Jowl’s most ambitious, large-scale production to date.
This four week run as part of bite08 is the only opportunity to see Cheek by
Jowl’s English language work in the UK this year.

Troilus and Cressida, Barbican,

Soldiers are hailed as homecoming heroes in Shakespeare's Trojan tragedy
By Kate BassettSunday, 1 June 2008

Complaints have been raised that our troops, these days, do not get cheered. That isn't the case in Cheek by Jowl's modern-dress production of Troilus and Cressida,
Shakespeare's Trojan War saga newly staged by Declan Donnellan. On the Barbican's reconfigured stage, the traverse set (designed by Nick Ormerod) is a long strip of khaki canvas. It suggests a sandy battlefield but also functions as a parade, almost a
catwalk.

Troy's warriors return from their daily conflicts waving proudly to the sound of roaring crowds. They are really soldiers-cum-sporting heroes in their
butch vests, training shoes and what look like cricket pads refashioned by Darth Vader (not wholly convincing). Oliver Coleman's Paris and his trophy-babe, Marianne Oldham's Helen, go on to pose for a photo-shoot in the style of Mr and
Mrs Beckham.

Obviously, that's satirical, but this production is low on sardonic bite and decadent sleaze. Aside from King Priam being bedridden, there's not much sense of a stagnant siege, of the city having taken a battering or of the encamped Greeks really festering. David Collings's linen-suited Pandarus hardly acts seedy at all as he hustles his niece
Cressida into bed with Troilus, and he appears to be dying of TB at the end,
rather than the pox. On the Grecian side, likewise, the bilious cynical commentary on love and war is weakly delivered by Richard Cant's cross-dressing Thersites.

Still, maybe we've had enough obviously fetid productions of Troilus, and Donellan's
innovations – which often deliberately run against the grain of the lines – can be refreshing. Oldham's gorgeous Helen drifts through in a white evening dress as the Prologue, talking about the war with a lightly chilling flippancy, and she haunts the play thereafter. She wanders in whenever men speak of her, like an obsessive memory in the mind's eye – such psychological ghosts being a Donnellan trademark.

Also very clear here is that the titular hero and heroine are a Romeo and Juliet
messed up by war. Alex Waldmann's small, immature Troilus is innately loving, kissing his sick father repeatedly. At the same time, he has a hysterical streak comparable to that of his war-traumatised sister, Cassandra. His insecurity keeps twisting his ardour for Cressida into wary retreats when he's wooing, and then into feverish manhandling when he learns that she must be sent packing to the potentially seductive Greek camp. Lucy Briggs-Owen is a touching Cressida, an
essentially shy, bruised adolescent who is pushed around by the men in her life and
forced into brazenness to survive.

Donnellan often draws exceptional performances out of young actors. Briggs-Owen and Oldham are certainly names to watch. There are a few stiff performances, but the production gains fluidity with interwoven scenes. Dressed up as a crooning cabaret Helen, Thersites rather wonderfully gets both armies slow-dancing together, and Ryan Kiggell's Ulysses is a riveting manipulative bureaucrat, looking timidly bespectacled as he clutches surveillance files.

"boris godunov" (cheek by jowl / chekhov international theatre festival)

friday 16th may 2008

http://picasaweb.google.com/marktrezona/BorisGodunovCheekByJowl

"boris godunov"
by alexander pushkin

cheek by jowl
http://www.cheekbyjowl.com/

director ~ declan donnellan
designer ~ nick ormerod
lighting designer ~ judith greenwood
music director ~ maxim gutkin
choreographer ~ irina filippova
declan donnellan's interpreter & literary consultant ~ dina dodina
assistant directors ~ evgeny pisarev, anna kolesnokova
technical director ~ vladimir kizeev







the company:
gavirila pushkin, pushkin's nephew/shcheklalov, the duma scribe ~ alexy dadonov
boris godunov, the russian tsar ~ alexander feklistov
marina mnishek, yuri mnishek's daughter ~ irina grineva
prince vorotynsky/russian prisoner ~ ilia ilin
father varlaam/karela, the cossack ~ nikolay khmelev
owner of the tavern ~ olga khokholva
poet ~ leonid krasovitsky
grigori otrepyev, a young monk ~ evgeny mironov
prince vasily shuisky ~ sergey lanbamin
father misail/nikolka, the god's fool ~ alexander lenkov
feodor, boris' son/russian boy ~ nikta lukinsarovitch
sobansky/baliff ~ evgeny plekanov
semyon godunov/prince kurbsky ~ dimitry shcherbina
patriarch/yuri mnishek, the polish nobleman ~ oleg vavilov
pimen, the monk/pushkin ~ igor yasulovich
tsarevna xenia, boris daughter ~ elena zakharova
father superior/chief baliff/catholic priest/basmanov, army leader ~ mikhail zhigalov

at the barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=6490





Pushkin's lyrical masterpiece is a gripping exposé of the seductive appeal of power and the terrible price that must be paid for it. Money, corruption, sex and blood thicken this sinuous and radical play, inspired by Shakespeare's histories.





background to the text:
"boris godunov" was written in 1825 (the same year as the decembrist uprising) when alexander pushkin was in exile on his family's estate. while working on this play, pushkin studied many chronicles, historical treatises, saint's biographies, ancient russian scripts and folk legends, and was particualorly inspired by the work of william shakespeare and the publication of karamazin's "history of russia" in 1824.

"the survey of shakespeare, of karamazin, of our ancient chronicles, gave me the idea to turn into a a dramatic way one of the most tragic eras of modern histroy. i imitated shakespeare's style in what concerns the large and free desrciptions of characters, for extraordinary types, construction and his simplicity. i followwed karamazin in his clear development of events and finally, in the chronicles, i did my best to find out what could have been the form of thinking and speaking at the time."

pushkin was fond of history. his library contained about four hundred historical and philosophical works, and he had read many of the french, english and german authors with revolutionary ideas on history and philosophy.

pushkin disobeys the rules of french tragedy, then dominating the russian stage. disdaining the racinian model there is neither unity of time nor of place. the action unfolds from the 20th february 1598 to 10th june 1605 - a little more than seven years. the play is cut into twenty three little scenes that unfold in numerous different locations - in moscow, in poland, and on the plains of russia. having finished "boris godunov" alexander sergeevitch wrote to his friend vlazemsky:

"my tragedy is written: i was reading it aloud to myself, alone, sat there clapping my hands and shouting "well done, pushkin, well done, son of a bitch ..."

before the play begins . . .
1584 ~ ivan the terrible, the first duke of all russia who had officially called himself "tsar" dies. having murdered his heir in a drunken rage, the throne passses to his next son, feodor. feodor's close friend and brother-in-law, boris godunov, effectively governs russia.

1591 ~ in the city of uglitch, ivan the terrible's youngest son, dimitry, is murdered. a suspicion arises that it is boris who has ordered the child's murder. this plan would ease boris' path to the throne on the death of dimitry's brother tsar feodor.

1598 ~ tsar feodor dies. none of ivan the terrible's sons remain alive so the most likely candidate for the throne - popular with the people and well experienced in managing the state during feodor's reign - is boris godunov.

after the play ends . . .
1605 ~ grigori otrepyev, posing as the tsarevich dimitry, successfully usurps the russian throne, marries the catholic marina mnishek, proclaims her tsarina and together with her reigns over all russia. judging by the reports of foreign ambassadors to his court, he made a clever ruler.

1606 ~ count vasily shuisky, who had been pardoned by the imposter, organises a conspiracy against him. basmanov dies trying to defend the imposter. ultimately the imposter is captured, horribly murdered, and his remains are ground up with gunpowder and shopt from a cannon from the kremlin walls in the direction of poland. shuisky is crowned tsar and rules russia until 1610.

mairina mnishek
after the death of the imposter grigoro otrepyev, his widown marina mnishek's life was spared on the condition that she renounce her title and return to poland. undaunted by her first short-lived reign as tsarina and with help from her father, marina made her way to tushino, a small village north of moscow, where she recognised another young man as her husband back from the dead. polish politician stansilav zolkiewski wrote in his memoirs, that the only two things false dimitrys i and ii had in common was that " they were both human and usurpers." this marriage soon went the way of her first.

after the death of false dimitry ii in december of 1610, marina mnishek attached herself to the cossack ivan zarutsky who attempted to bring her son, ivan dmitryevich (son of the imposter) to the throne. after her third plan to usurp the russian throne failed, mnishek fled south to astrakhan where the people led an uprising in 1614 aimed solely at capturing and ejecting marina and her family from the city. they fled into the steppes, and there attempted to raise support for a cossack uprising. they were eventually captured in 1614.

ivan zarutsky and mnishek's son ivan were executed and mariuna died in prison soon afterwards.





By Paul Taylor
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
The Independent

Most people know the story of Boris Godunov only through Mussorgsky's opera. Thanks to Declan Donnellan and Russian company Cheek by Jowl, we now have a rare chance to experience Pushkin's original 1825 play. In a thrilling modern-dress version, it emerges as a mordant commentary on the instabilities of power and the repetitive nature of tyranny, and it crackles with edgy, topical relevance.
The play poses a challenge to directors: not only is it restlessly episodic and labour-intense in terms of casting, it also lacks a conventional climax. There's no big showdown between the two rivals for the throne. Having murdered his way to the top, Tsar Boris is challenged by a young pretender, a runaway monk who claims to be the boy allegedly eliminated. Frustratingly, the two never met. Undaunted, Donnellan finds imaginative solutions to this problem and arrives at a unified vision of the piece.
The point about the warring opponents is that they are both fundamentally impostors and the production, in overlapping scenes, highlights that thematic kinship. For example, Grigory, the made-over monk, surfaces like the emanation of a bad conscience, eerily replacing the spectre of the child-victim as Alexander Feklistov's boorish Boris broods over his guilt.
Pushkin's crucial insight is that the pretender's supporters don't care whether he's fake: Grigory here acts like a game show host who welcomes his cheer-leaders with a slick insincerity. The theatre audience, seated on either side of the catwalk stage, are treated like the Russian mob to these cynical, showbiz exercises.
Andrey Kuzichev's excellent Grigory has just the right slippery quality as the protean pretender who sheds disguises like skins. His seduction of a Polish noblewoman proceeds by comic fits and starts. When he confesses his true identity, she allows him to resume once assured of his mad self-conviction. Power is the sexual turn-on; principle is utterly discounted.