ECHO (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) @ Royal Court for LIFT Festival

Where does performance happen? What does it mean to be present in a space? Nassim Soleimanpour’s latest play, ECHO, digs at these questions. Using the convention of an actor who hasn’t read the script before performing live which Soleimanpour used with great success on White Rabbit, Yellow Rabbit, this play pushes that technique further. Not only is the actor contending with a script they haven’t seen, but with technology, projection, and more. This play asks big questions; about who we are, what ties us to a place or a memory, and importantly about what it means to move away from home and family, living as an immigrant in another culture divorced from your own but unable to separate yourself.

I won’t say more as to not steal the surprise — but suffice it to say that the images and questions this play ask have been looming over me since seeing it. That’s not easy.

Caretaker - Hester Chillingworth @ Royal Court

You can view Hester Chillingworth’s installation Caretaker here, for as long as the Royal Court is closed due to COVID.

I really love the stillness of this installation from Hester Chillingworth; a camera is positioned facing the Royal Court’s Jerwood stage, which was set for the next day’s performance of Shoe Lady by E.V. Crowe, when London theatres were closed due to COVID. I’ve visited this a few times now, and there are subtle changes over time. The notes indicate there are occasional audio messages, though I’ve not heard any.

The peacefulness of an empty theatre is something non-theatre people are unlikely to experience. The space, while empty, feels resonant with life, the echoes of the moments that have happened there before. It is an extremely comforting space for me, the empty theatre. It demands nothing, but is steeped in possibility, which is really what we need right now.

Take a moment to pop in if you can.

Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch [recorded 2017 - SchauSpielHaus]

I watched this in recording here - although this production isn’t up any longer, there are more great productions to see.

Alice Birch’s script traces three generations of women over top of one another, through similar moments in their lives. The three timelines occur concurrently, with single conversations existing within each, yet also across - with a response in one timeline seeming to call to a question in another, across decades. Choosing to position the three women in claustrophobic columns, each with their own upstage door, no walls yet feeling clearly they could not leave, in chronological order left to right (from audience view) the matriarch is positioned as having the most power, however as we see, it is the youngest who acts upon her power, where her mother and grandmother succumbed to mental illness.

Alex Eales’ set makes each woman’s room feel like her prison cell, and Katie Mitchell’s direction, keeping the three on stage for the duration, including costume changes which are choreographed and lit as the women stand there like paper dolls awaiting their new outfit. It seems to imply the that each is imprisoned, contained, controlled - almost devoid of the capacity for choice. Strangely, not realizing this was the same designer who did Katie’s Fraulein Julie, this set did make me think of that production as well.

What wasn’t perfectly clear was how and why the youngest is different, until the final moments - deviation from the same choreography and rhythm may have helped us see this capacity to break the cycle, imply its possibility. I wonder whether this could have been baked subliminally into that choreography.

Otherwise, this was a stunning production of an unbelievably challenging text. The rhythm and technique required, while balancing a delightful liveness and action, even in moments where the actor must technically pause for another line, while maintaining intent, was beautiful and an absolute treat to watch.

This was a re-mount of the same production, but with a German cast. I’d be very curious to see the English cast version (Royal Court) as well.

Cyprus Avenue by David Ireland - The Royal Court (recorded 2017)

I watched this in recording from the 2017 Royal Court production. You can watch it here until April 24.

This is a gut punch of a play. Funny, shocking, dark, David Ireland examines personal identity and how it is deeply intertwined with a sense of where you are from. The story focuses on Eric, an older male who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, whose very identity is defined by them. He actively defines as NOT Irish, as NOT Fenian, while struggling with a new world where those older tensions are relaxed. It is a meditation on masculinity, on systemic and inherited violence.

Vicky Featherstone’s direction surprises, managing the pace of the story and time shifts in a way that creates jarring moments. We are lulled into believing we’re in one place then quickly jolted to another. The square, white playing space is increasingly messy as the play goes on and the tension escalates, leaving a clear and visible mark, representative of the invisible marks the violence of his youth has left on Eric.

The ensemble are uniformly strong, each bringing a balance to surround Stephen Rea’s riveting and powerful performance. The miniscule and momentary shifts in his performance are truly stunning.

I won’t say more for risk of revealing the surprises in the text. Just watch.

Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. by Caryl Churchill @ Royal Court

Presented in a single evening, Churchill’s new quartet of plays at the Royal Court dig into the relationship between the stories we tell ourselves, and contemporary news. It is easy to simply view the plays as about stories alone - however this is to do a disservice to Churchill’s omnipresent political commentary pulsing through any of her work.

Glass is about a teen girl who is made of glass; she sits atop the mantlepiece amongst the other beautiful things, to protect her from the harshness of other youth. Her emotions are visible to others, and despite her family’s efforts to protect her, she is vulnerable once she connects with someone, who is also troubled. Perhaps it is because I am the mother of a teen, but this piece shouted for me about the dangers of trying too hard to protect our children from the realities of the world.

Kill is a classic Churchillian dark monologue. Told from the point of view of a Greek god who recounts the story of a family who murder and fight amongst themselves across generations, simultaneously recalling the founding stories of Western civilization rooted in violence, and the impact of generational trauma. He is joined on stage by a child who draws, and occasionally repeats his words; this simple inclusion underscores the relationship between how children learn to see the world and the stories they take in both intentionally and unintentionally.

Bluebeard begins with friends at a dinner party, gossiping about a mutual friend who has been discovered to have committed some crimes. These crimes are macabre in nature, and the discussion moves from the point where they distance themselves from this friend, to beginning to explain his behaviour, to where they have managed to justify it. In the post #MeToo moment, the play forces the audience to reckon with the moral gymnastics many people do in order to continue to be friends with someone or to enjoy their art.

Finally, Imp is the longest, and initially the most naturalistic of the four plays; two older cousins who live together entertain a niece and a young friend. The conversations are absurd in the way that most awkward extended family conversations can be; until it is revealed that the woman, Dot, believes to have an imp who does wishes captured in a bottle. Throughout the play the characters opinions of one another and of the related relationships oscillate, as they tell themselves stories to help understand their world. The introduction of the imp merely amplifies the focus on the fact that often we need stories, however fantastical, to get by.

The cast are outstanding, and director James MacDonald cleverly manages the tempo of the scripts perfectly - not only within themselves, but across the evening. The addition of circus performers between the first and second, and second and third plays proved ingenious - a necessary yet haunting sorbet which visually represented these same mental and moral gymnastics we all perform to keep on.