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GORGE '09 -NO PLAIN JANE REVIEW: DAY 2 by Jane Howard
Cormack’s play tells the story of George, an artist, as he struggles with the concept presented to him by his agent, Anna: to draw God for a book jacket. George is drawing a portrait of his twin brother, Bernard, sitting in the bathtub, and after he draws Anna in the same position, he tries to seduce her, and he tells her about the time he and Bernard kissed in the bath. By far the most successful of the productions was that by TheimaGen, directed by Justin McGuiness – fusing traditional theatre methods with video projections to tell the story. Jamie Harding played both George and Bernard, and it was incredibly interesting to watch him act against videos of both himself and scene partner Kate Roxby. The use of video allowed quick changes between scenes, gave an interesting visual exploration of the themes of the piece, and neatly solved the problem of having a script calling for identical twins. Unreasonable Adults’ production was not one which I personally respond to. While some people found it an interesting interpretation, the general consensus in the audience at the talk back was one of disappointment and confusion. The stage was covered with key words from the play, before the (heavily edited) play was essentially read by text-to-speech synthesis. No connection seemed to exist between the two actors sitting on stage and the text, and I viewed it as a disappointing disservice to McCormack’s intriguing script. While one of the requirements of the production companies in Gorge is to use 100% of the script, all requirements could be bargained on with Daisy Brown and Chris Drummond, and Unreasonable Adults bargained on this factor. Some of the edits worked, such as turning dialogue to narrative, but some, such as cutting out the introduction to Bernard, did not. To me, the straight read of the piece (by actors Eliza Lovell, Rory Walker and Brendan Rock [Rock, with real life twin David actually gave one of the biggest improv laughs of the night) was a much better piece of theatre and performance. Part of the excitement from a concept such as Gorge is that you don’t quite know what to expect, you might be thrown outside your comfort zone, and the companies take risks. It is nonetheless disappointing when a subpar production that is a disservice to the script is the result. This isn’t to say it is an experiment that shouldn’t have happened – Adian Munn’s production on the Thursday night was brilliant, and similarly came from someone who doesn’t have a background in traditional script-to-stage theatre. Maybe some people in the audience even found a new style of performance they responded to and will seek out again; I was not one of those people. Luckily, we still have TheimaGen’s production to look on and smile, and the dialogue opened up in the audience after the two productions was interesting, in part: what makes good theatre, what do companies take as the important parts of the script, and what does the audience take away? I am very much looking forward to tonight, and even if the productions aren’t any good, at least they’re short! (Although, clearly the wish is they are brilliant.) Bring on day three! Gorge 09 ends tonight Saturday 21st November, when Real Time Collaborators and Stone/Castro interpret Nicki Bloom's Footsoldiers
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