When does titillation become voyeurism? Two very different shows consider the darker aspects of eroticism.
Con O'Neill's Dave is scrambling out of bed. Has his humiliating attempt at sexual congress with Amanda Drew been filmed, by accident, on his webcam? It looks that way for a moment in Leo Butler's new payback drama, Faces in the Crowd, as O'Neill rushes over to his computer exclaiming that no one has switched off the wireless connection. Heaven knows what he'd say if he glanced upwards. The audience in the Royal Court's attic theatre are all peering down from where his cornice should be, like dozens of flies on the wall.
It's hard not to become somewhat bug-eyed watching director Clare Lizzimore's sunken-stage premiere. This City worker's Shoreditch apartment - where Drew's Joanne turns up as a blast from his Sheffield past - has only imaginary partition walls. So you can see everything. To begin with, she heads into the bathroom, pulls down her pants and has a wee. Later, O'Neill perches there, trying to - how shall I put this? - arouse his trouser snake with rather more than a sleight of hand, because Joanne's body clock is ticking. Moving swiftly on from the shock of the loo, there's a bout of coitus interruptus beside the kitchen sink.
Perhaps this makes Butler's play sound tackily pornographic, but Lizzimore deftly avoids that. Faces in the Crowd feels more like a painfully raw slice of life, thanks to multilayered performances that aren't about titillation at all. They explore these old flames' fluctuating, messed-up emotions: their suppressed desperation, their bitterness, and their unexpected surges of tenderness. Drew is brusque and malicious, with a deep-buried vulnerability, while O'Neill appears more inclined to gentleness, yet with frightening eruptions of vicious rage.
The sunken stage, co-designed by William Fricker and Rae Smith, benefits the play too. It generates a kind of pressure-cooker intensity, while the recriminations boil up, and by turning the audience into snoopers it creates a curious intimacy which tallies with Joanne's own nosiness. She rifles through Dave's cupboards when he isn't looking, as well as flashing at a teenage peeping Tom across the street.
The imaginary walls mean you get to see how individuals behave when they give each other the slip and think they're alone. Butler also generates a degree of menacing uncertainty. He keeps you guessing about precisely what went on in this duo's dysfunctional past.
Unfortunately, Joanne's bullying demands verge on the unbelievable. The plot's delayed revelations end up seeming oddly sprawling, and Butler's fine ear for the Yorkshire dialect is belatedly undermined by what sounds obtrusively like the introduction of his big theme: financial and moral debt.
LA CLIQUE is more overtly kinky, with its tongue humorously in its cheek. Burlesque cabaret, a fast-rising cult on the fringe, has triumphantly reached the West End, with the Hippodrome in Leicester Square being rescued from oblivion by this troupe of contortionists, acrobats and sword-swallowers - all with an alternative twist. Don't expect a spectacular on the scale seen at this venue in Victorian times when elephants and polar bears cavorted in a 100,000-litre pool designed by Frank Matcham. Nevertheless, LA CLIQUE creates a very winning big top-cum-cabaret atmosphere, with strings of lights, swags of red velvet and a raised stage closely encircled by the audience. More importantly, these frisky performance artists and circus acts are startlingly entertaining, with a hugely enjoyable "Aargh" factor.
Captain Frodo performs the most jaw-dropping routine. A wonderful clown who looks like Bjorn Borg's idiot brother, he has such freakily loose joints that he can squeeze through the head of a tennis racquet, lurching around with one foot jammed under his chin and one arm whirling above his head like a helicopter blade. A fantastically polished impression of a crazy clutz.
Meanwhile, the sword-swallower Miss Behave totters like a deviant Betty Boop, voluptuously stuffed into a scarlet PVC dress. She manages to be absolutely charming while nicking punters' drinks, clearing her throat with a steel table leg, and sticking a rose through her pierced tongue - twisting it like an elastic band till it twirls back on its own. Ursula Martinez, with delightful flamboyance, also pulls off a mocking magic trick, where a disappearing hankie turns into a cheeky striptease.
The second half dips and, personally, I could have done without the muscle-bound aerialist "Bath Boy", who clearly fancies himself as he flaks around on giant rubber bands in dripping wet jeans. All in all though, great fun.
Kate Bassett
The Independent
26 October 2008
|
