THEATRE/PERFORMANCE
EUREKA DAY @ THE OLD VIC
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As this adroitly, succinctly scripted work so clearly shows, consensus is a near-impossible condition to reach in times where every opinion must be considered and every fringe group must be acknowledged, all the better to achieve fair and balanced policies. Yet so often, with wilful, selfish and smug humans involved, only polarisation, recrimination and character assassination emerge from discussion, complicating agreement. An outbreak of mumps in a small (self-satisfied) liberal arts college leads to lockdown and crisis amongst faculty, parents and students when an imposed vaccination programme bitterly splits the population into those who support and oppose the process. It is to playwright Johnathan Spector’s credit that each perspective is understood with clarity and sympathy, no one is painted in heavy-handed colours, no one is absolutely villainous nor virtuous. Helen Hunt is particularly skilled at presenting the great personal tragedy that fuels her rigid perspective, isolating her in its stony grip, unable to comprehend outside its parameters.
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That this was written long before Covid bulldozed its way onto the global stage is shockingly prescient. A riotous sequence in which a well-intentioned community meeting over Zoom gradually devolves into sour exchanges and childish name-calling (a recurring emoji is utilised to hilariously devastating comic effect) is a standout moment in the 2022 theatre year, sardonically brilliant and a harrowingly sad example of the precarious state of contemporary communication. The administration’s faults, failures and limitations are exposed by this extreme event, a true test of values and ethics. Board members will come and go, there will be those who lead then fall from favour, all replaced in turn, a cycle repeated. Spector makes certain to see the human first, agenda second, and locates the funny in the awful, absurd circus. Eureka Day closed on 31 October
THE BURNT CITY @ WOOLWICH WORKS
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If you are an aficionado of a more traditional, linear model of performance, then this epic promenade piece from the famed Punchdrunk Theatre folks will not appeal. Across two vast warehouse spaces of elaborately staged public arenas and domestic interiors, a spectator floats (masked, almost as if a ghost) while multiple narratives unspool along the corridors and in secret corners. You are free to follow or break from one storyline to the next as you explore the passageways ( I took to occasionally visiting areas where a great drama had just taken place to more quietly contemplate and absorb the intricate details of each environment). A comprehensive knowledge of Greek myth may aid & abet a viewer’s experience as you navigate the desolate streets of the fallen Troy, a spiritless husk of its heyday as palace of decadence & hedonism, a dust of ruin settled into the pavement.
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The second sphere (by way of checkpoint) of this former arsenal building represents Greece and precariously triumphant leader Agamemnon’s fraught homecoming, a battlefield playing out the psychically damaging events of the war, full of tumultuous sacrifice and compromise. Clytemnestra, incandescent with fury at her husband’s actions, schemes to destroy. No one will emerge unscathed. Punchdrunk achieves a dizzying vibrancy, a punk-rock abandon. The performers have a dangerous, thrilling physicality (and each audience member will have sensuous encounters with more than a few of them). The night culminates in a final pageant of soul ascent/descent that unfolds as a rave (somehow the great, impressive internal backstage machine has managed to corrall all audience members, as diffused as they have been throughout the buildings, into this final section of spectacle). From a purely genius business standpoint, Punchdrunk has made it desirous to return to the event to follow along a plot line you may have entirely missed upon first visit. Or you may just want to return to the enchanting dissociative elation provoked by a peregrination through the mysterious dream palace. The Burnt City is booking through 18 April 2023
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