Flight Patterns
42 Winchester St. Lyttelton, Christchurch
22/02/2007 - 09/02/2007
Production Details
devised by Lucette Hindin, Eve Barlow, Allison Hall and Milton Charles
under the direction of Lucette Hindin
presented by Laverne Laverne ( www.laverne-laverne.blogspot.com)
The Clinic
Flight Patterns offers you the unique experience of seeing a piece of theatre performed in a four bedroom house (and garden) in Lyttelton. The house is scheduled for demolition this year, and presents a story of its own in the 1970s carpets, cracking paint and crumbling walls.
As an audience, you are invited simply to watch – no painful audience participation here – as Flight Patterns winds its way through various rooms, presenting many characters and stories. The performance is both poetic and funny, and explores the way we skirt around the issues of love and intimacy that are familiar to us all: Trying to get love or trying to understand it, now finding it, now losing it, running from it, abusing it, and basking in its glory!
The performance has been devised by the cast of three with their director Lucette Hindin (of the clinic performance company – www.theclinic.co.nz). This means that the characters, stories, script and ideas are all new and original, invented in the process of exploring the themes of love and intimacy in workshops and rehearsals in the house. Flight Patterns also features original music composed for the performance by music producer Dayna Sanerivi.
The audience is strictly limited, due to the difficulty of large numbers getting a good view of the action in, say, the bathroom. As a spectator, you will be part of a small group of 10-15 people, and will also be offered supper during the performance.
Wed – Sun, 9pm, all tickets $10.00
bookings essential – ph 3288 266
email laverne@theclinic.co.nz
Theatre ,
No shortage of creative ideas
Review by Lindsay Clark 09th Mar 2007
Periodically, The Clinic group emerges to enliven the local theatre scene with challenging images and enterprising ideas. The current production, now almost at the end of its season, is no exception.
The devising group, made up of the trio of actors and the director, was never interested in a linear narrative. Rather, the piece presents a scatter of scenes all related to something rather loosely suggested as ‘love’ and the relationship patterns we create as we find and lose it. A necessarily small audience visits different stations around the cottage, each marked out by red tape, with just enough room for standing or sitting alongside the players.
In the tradition of presentational theatre, we are asked to respond intellectually rather than engage emotionally with the parade of characters and the diverse techniques they use. Sometimes we are addressed or read to directly; sometimes we are given reported speech between two characters but delivered by one, who may or may not be speaking his own voice.
One scene involves the solo reading of an e-mail, from a bath. The prologue, using all three actors in costume evoking their personal fantasies, is delivered outside, from a bed, exploring text from a lonely hearts column. Clearly, there is no shortage of creative ideas for these players.
It is fair to say that the manner of working the material is more provocative and interesting than the subject itself and the audience is well served by surprise after surprise. The battered old cottage is due for demolition some time soon, so that the images fleshed out bring with them a sense of surreal decay and loss.
This work excites the whole debate about the function of theatre. It is not for those who like a story, recognizable characters or clever words.
It has a world weary air and a decided leaning towards the grotesque in image and act. Yet few among the tiny audience will forget it and some may still be pondering the patterns they are making themselves as they drift from one scenario to the next.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments