STARTLING PRODUCTIONS WITH TWO FACES |
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Faust Chroma + Enigma Emmy Göring and Nico Sphinx Text by Werner Fritsch Directed by Peter Falkenberg Christchurch’s Free Theatre at Niebelheim, Christchurch Arts Centre, Christchurch From 26 Mar 2008 to 4 Apr 2008 Reviewed by Lindsay Clark, 30 Mar 2008 |
For students of contemporary theatre and indeed anyone seriously prepared to step aside from conventional performance work, these pieces are an interesting prospect. They are not for everyone but neither do they give off the whiff of indulgence sometimes associated with non-commercial productions. A further opportunity to explore these fresh-faced plays is provided by the presence of the visiting playwright/ filmmaker himself and his willingness to engage in discussion after the performances.
The festival has two faces. The first presents 2 solid monologues in the Nibelheim basement. Running at 2 hours with interval , these are shaped from images and memories spilling from the lives of two famous German women. Both are set on a small, revolving stage, turning throughout the spiel at the same walking pace and creating a sense of disequilibrium for the audience. Sometimes this condition worked to advantage, sometimes not.
Enigma Emmy Goring, is built around the visit to her dentist by the saccharine Emmy, 23 years an actress, eleven of them married to Hitler's designated successor Hermann Goring. The trauma of Nazi Germany is narrated in tiny, telling details. Stretched out in a thoroughly gruesome chair, surrounded by unpleasant looking implements and sometimes receiving horribly realistic treatment from the softly spoken Doctor Bosl, she drifts in and out of coherent reminiscence. At times the free fall of the language made me suspect that she was ad-libbing but it felt entirely in character.
Given the static position from which she is working, Marian McCurdy as Emmy gives an indelible performance, all the more creditable since she must metamorphose into a contrasting pop star character in Nico Sphinx of Ice after the brief interval.
This role is shared between two back to back actors and charts a childhood under fascism, Nico's involvement with Velvet Underground and music greats. Shot through with drugged and dreamy images, it is mostly delivered from behind closed eyelids, pale faces coldly disengaged from us and strangely vulnerable.
Over in the University Theatre's intimate space, the feverish hell of the Faust legend (one hour and forty minutes without interval),is played out by the company on other nights. Faust Chroma is an unsettling and complex account of the dying actor Gustav Grundgens, favourite of Hermann Goring and four times creator of the Mephisto role. In this piece, the man - an unrepentant Faust character - and the satanic alter ego created by his actor self, battle it out in a fluid compilation of remembered politics and power.
Visually the production is startling, making full use of high platforms to create multiple playing areas. Footage of Grundgen's film role, projected on to transparent gauze curtaining the dying man's bed, gives us frightening double images - huge faces mouthing over reduced human forms. The characters in Grundgen's world are chameleon creatures, often human puppets, in a dark landscape of the mind.
The ensemble performs with high energy, framing the central Grundgens character, presented by Ryan Reynolds, with committed purpose and physical assurance. The pure voice of Emma Johnston in the role of Gretchen is electrifying.
Special mention must be made of the musician (also listed as God), Chris Reddington, who works as one with his stripped down piano, inhabiting the instrument and creating sound as integral to action and word as breath, providing a coherent flow to sustain the sometimes bewildering torrent of presented work on stage.
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