Sunday 15 March 2015

Antigone at the Barbican, or Solid Not Special

Note: This is a rather belated review of the performance on Sunday 8th March 2015. Usually I would not post something so delayed, but because we have a particular interest in the Edinburgh Festival and this travels there later in the year I wanted to record my thoughts despite the delay.

Late this month I'll finally get round to seeing Ivo van Hove's production of A View from the Bridge. Possibly it will then be clear to me why he's been much praised. On the strength of this performance it was not. It's not that this is a bad production, though there are some oddities, but I can't say that I found it either especially powerful or perceptive.

The setting is sparse. There's a raised platform in the centre into the middle of which various of the show's bodies are periodically raised and lowered, and with an access ramp leading into Kreon's house at the back. Along the front it can be accessed by various sets of steps and also facing the audience are a number of bookshelves and a sofa. The implication at the end, the reasoning behind which I couldn't make out, is that we are in some sort of archive. At the back there's a flat panel the width of the stage onto which various things are projected which add little. With the exception of the projections and the ending it's all perfectly serviceable if not especially inspired. The same applies to the costumes, which are modern and minimal, and don't do much to distinguish the characters, though this may well be intentional. I would criticise the high heels which all the women seem to be wearing which sometimes create a false note (as when Antigone is being buried alive) or undermine an attempt to hurry from one point to another (Ismene on a couple of occasions).

Sunday 8 March 2015

Game at the Almeida, or, Nasty but Unconvincing Shots

This is the second play Mike Bartlett has written for Rupert Goold's Almeida, and the third of his plays that I've seen. Neither 13 nor King Charles III especially impressed me but Game is in a different class...and not in a good way.

Bartlett's premise on this occasion is that a housing and employment crisis in some unidentified location in England (one presumes a city) has led a couple to accept a house under an unpleasant condition. That condition is that at certain times of the day they can be shot with tranquiliser darts by paying punters. I criticised Bartlett's over-praised King Charles III for its unconvincing premise. Bartlett makes even less of an attempt with the premise here. The play is completely uninterested in exploring the economic circumstances which have led to this set up, or in creating characters of sufficient depth to make their presence in the set-up, and their choices following that, have any real dramatic conviction, or activate any emotional connection (with at least this member of the audience anyway). Instead Bartlett attempts to substitute audience complicity for intelligent argument or depth of character. Thus the audience are placed, with the paying, shooting customers, in four blinds outside the gift house. All this succeeded in doing was convincing me that I had not the least desire ever to participate in such an excuse for sport and that I did not believe (not unlike in King Charles III) that such a set up would ever have got legally off the drawing board.