Searing drama
I read this
play maybe nine months ago. It is so beautiful to read (in this
magnificent translation). I shall quote some excerpts:
"I have a baby in my
belly. Wahab! My belly is full of you. My belly is full of you.
You see? Isn’t it amazing? It’s magnificent and
horrible, isn’t it? It’s an abyss. And it’s
like freedom to wild birds, isn’t it? And there are no
more words. Just the wind! I have a child in my belly. When
I heard Elhame tell me, an ocean exploded in my head. Seared."
Some more : "I’m
leaving, Nawal. It’s all over for me, soon I will reach
the light, but for you, it’s just beginning..... We….
our family, the women in our family…… are caught in
the web of anger. We have been for ages: I was angry at my mother,
and your mother is angry with me, just as you are angry at your
mother. And your legacy to your daughter will be anger too. We
have to break the thread. So learn to read, learn to write, learn
to count, learn to speak. Learn. Then leave. You will hear my
voice telling you: 'Leave Nawal, leave! Take your youth and any
possible happiness and leave the village.' You are the bloom of
this valley, Nawal. You are its sensuality and its smell. Take
them with you and tear yourself away from here, the way we tear
ourselves from our mother’s womb. Learn to read, write,
count, and speak. Learn to think. Nawal. Learn."
And
more: "We are at the beginning of the
hundred years war. At the beginning of the last war in the world.
I’m telling you, Sawada, our generation is an 'interesting'
generation. Seen from above, it must be very instructive to see
us struggling to name what is barbarous and what isn’t.
Yes. Very 'interesting'. A generation raised on shame. Really.
At the crossroads. We think, this war will only end with the end
of time. But people don’t realise, if we don’t find
a solution to these massacres immediately, we never will."
The translation of this text is expressed in such
simple but beautiful words. The language of these connected, sentenced
words is so simply poetic that one longs to either feel the shape
of those words in ones own mouth or to have ones ears caressed
by them, because they evoke such rich imagery and deep remembered
feelings, a viscerally sensuous experience is promised. The resonances
of living are over powering in this text.
Then, when layered within the savage world of the
play the tension between those two realities, the poetic text
and the world of the play, is so exquisite that to experience
it could be one of the great humbling human experiences, that
makes you grateful to have been lucky enough to have read it or
heard it. I had some expectation of this when attending the performance
at Belvoir St.
Wajdi Mouawad is of Lebanese Christian Maronite
origin but is now a French Canadian. The play was written in French
and translated into English for the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.
The Greeks, through there surviving dramatic literature (and much
else) have been attempting to tell us humans how to live well,
for thousands of years. We have ignored them. In this play the
Oedipus Rex story and the great cycle of The Oresteia weave their
way through my consciousness. Myth and Instruction threaded into
our times and place.
The design - set by Stephen Curtis, lighting by
Nigel Levings - combined with astonishingly appropriate and beautiful
costumes (Anna Borghesi) (most beautiful because of their appropriateness)
set the mood for epic. It felt tremendous as we began and it conjured
up the images of my quarry experience of Peter Brook’s The
Mahabharata in Adelaide years ago and led me to a vast and
shimmering world of possibilities. (The Mahabharata with red carpets
on a desert floor; Scorched with a ghost coloured sandy desert
floor on top of a red and off white mosaic patterned floor) The
actors entered as a company with gracious authority and sat down
on one side of the walled space. And Brian Lipson playing our
guide to the story, Alphonse Lebel, began.
The director, Neil Armfield in his notes talks about
the experience of rehearsing this play at day thirteen, with thirteen
(working) days to go. "At times the intensity of the play’s
emotional demands has the ability to overtake and overwhelm the
actors. I assume we will move beyond that stage but I don’t
really know, and maybe that liability is a crucial part of the
play’s danger, it’s challenge." How prophetic.
On the performance I saw several of the actors were clearly overtaken
and overwhelmed by the emotions of the story and failed the challenge
relatively. Yael Stone as one of a set of twins, Janine, was in
such a heightened state of nervous anxiety that physical tension
prevented an audience sympathy. Vocally the telegraphed emotional
states caused the sentences into generalised abstractions of sound
instead of clear words and language. Emotional state, no clear
storytelling. This was more profoundly clear as Ashley Lyons playing
the other twin, Simon,played in almost every scene with her with
such understated but clear physical and vocal expression that
we were able to endow the fears, horror of the questors, on their
Oedipal journey, on him. (The scene towards the end of the play
when the origin of their paternity is revealed, is a case in point.
Scene 35. The voice of ancient times. Ms Stone in full stretched
demonstration of tension collapsed downwards with the horror of
it as if she had been physically assaulted, melodramatically.
In contrast Mr Jones in restrained but focused concentration heard
the news and simply held his breath. (What a breath was held.)
The imaginative sympathy that I could endow him with over took
and overwhelmed me. I had a catharsis of grief and terror of the
Old Testament type and was not simply asked to watch someone else
have it. Gillian Jones (with microphoned assistance) also appeared
to be overwhelmed by her material and the last beautifully written
letters that reveal the climactic truths became a series of halting,
hesitant gasps of thought that expressed a feeling of sentimentality
instead of deeply felt clear headed expressions of love and forgiveness.
The language should be the primary means of telling not emotions.
The letters are gestures that should be reminiscent of the Mandela
example in South Africa. Of such unbelievable modest human greatness
that one must consider ones own behaviour. We are "at the
crossroads. We think this war will only end with the end of time.
But people don’t realise, if we don’t find a solution
to these massacres immediately, we never will." At the performance
I attended sentimental mood not text is what I received with these
vital letters.
On the other hand the crystalline accuracy of emotion,
thought and articulation of the text by Paula Arundell delivered
with laser like focus of detail at speed was breathtakingly magnificent.
Moving to the point of petrification. Here was a craftsman honouring
the possibilities and all the demands of this extraordinary play.
Zindzi Okenyo was attempting to follow her example and did well.
But even more remarkable was Ms Arundell’s attention to
the play. As an observer on the side wall her empathetic concentration
draws us to her when we are lost by the other actors sometimes
bewildering offers, she through default became the principal source
of energy in any scene and guided us back to the narrative. Special
attention must be given to Brian Lipson's performance. Playing
our "guide", Alphonse Lebel, his text was a necessary
clown to the journey. Just as rich in it’s poetry but punctured
with wit, malapropisms. "Between the devil and the Blue Danube."
"There is a train at the end of the tunnel." Mr Lipson’s
handling of the humour and the created character is mercurial,
subtle, dignified and delightfully (relievedly) human. I also
enjoyed the work of Adam Hatzimanolis, his quite dignity and understated
sense of tragedy.
This is a wonderful attempt at what I think is a
great contemporary play. Whether the company ran out of time or
not, and there are problems that need more clarity, such as scene
31: The man who plays (Plays at killing or at photography). It
is, on reading the play, both such a powerful metaphor for the
human challenge of choice in the way we can live our lives (crudely:
a pursuit of beauty versus pursuit of violence) and also an integral
introduction to the horrors of the plays penultimate revelations,
that the way it is performed or staged at the moment it seems
to rushed to have the proper impact and set up. Neil Armfield
says in his notes by the time we read the program "it (the
production) will, hopefully, have reached some meaningful form."
It almost has.
In the final moments of the play Janine and Simon
listen to their mother’s silence. A great classical scholar
Richard Beacham says of The Oresteia, it is "a triumph of
hope over despair, reason over superstition, and justice over
brutality." This could be said of Scorched. Today
(July 31st, 2008) "The Bosnian Serb wartime leader, Radovan
Karadzic, will make his first appearance before the United Nations
Yugoslav war crimes court to enter a plea on genocide charges
at The Hague." The final direction from the writer after
listening to the silence of the mother is a cue for: torrential
rain. Sadly this did not happen in the Belvoir production.
Kevin Jackson
To read more of Kevin Jackson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
Kevin Jackson's Theatre Reviews.
