Review: They Only Come At Night: Visions, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars

Horror is a funny genre. In order to succeed – that is, to afright – it must almost transcend its chosen medium. It must, in some small way, trick us into forgetting ourselves. The slightest trace of cynicism – a refusal to become immersed – will always prove fatal. It is, after all, near impossible to scare someone prepared for and guarded against scare tactics. Horror must persuade us to leave ourselves defenceless or else circumnavigate those fortifications with something utterly unexpected.

Slung Low’s latest sets out to scare. It does so not by presenting a distinct fictive world and sucking us through a portal, but by weaving an alternate reality into this one. The need for investment remains, but the company ask us to remain entirely present rather than entering a state of semi-dissociation. That the joins between fiction and reality, the mechanics of the piece, are so evident, so clunky, however, prevents any real commitment to the fiction spun. Resistance is not so much futile as inevitable.

From the start we are told that the event we were expecting has been cancelled, replaced instead with a night-time tour of the city. “Oh, yeah!” we think, “Really?” – before being bundled into a car and driven around the block to the entrance of a dark tunnel, lined with white plastic sheeting. Through headphones, two competing voices – one advisory and caring, the other throatily malevolent – explain the scientific reality of vampiric myths through the crackle of interference. Sillhouettes stalk the dark: some shiftily appearing behind you, others sprinting past, blood-soaked. Pools of blood mingle with the salt path you tread. Gutted cars and carcasses are scattered around the confined space.

Admittedly, the experience sets your pulse aflutter and has you glancing over your shoulder. However, the overall is too consciously constructed for us to really succumb. The space – an underground car-park with a fear-factor of its own – is overdressed and the fictive circumstances forcibly imposed. Both the mechanics and motivations of They Only Come at Night are too evident and justifications too flimsy. The white sheeting, for example, is apparently in place to prevent unwanted radio communications.

What’s more, the script is a confusing mixture of religious and scientific waffle that never adds up to understanding. It is altogether reliant on staples of horror – seers and seekers, that sort of thing – without finding an underlying consistency that enables them to stand up to scrutiny. Formulas scratched on walls are as obviously meaningless as the pools of blood are fake. It begins to look like Slung Low are merely begging for our investment, rather than doing anything to cause it. “Ignore that projector,” they seem to say, “it’ll break the illusion. And, whatever you do, don’t turn around and catch the stage-hand re-setting the scene before.”

Perhaps that seems unforgiving, but the truth is that if Slung Low are aiming to catch us out they must expect us to try and catch them first. Instead, the whole experience feels like a conveyor belt of cause and effect. We are over-manipulated and expected to comply placidly; our pace is curtailed to suit their needs.

Yet, at times, this mechanistic effect feels deliberate. Its timing is such that, as you are initially instructed out of the car, a previous party can be seen leaving the tunnel. When you reach the same stage, your tour-guide turned rescuer assures you that “this has never happened before.” Then there’s the newspaper article left in your possession that dismisses the whole story as scaremongering hokum. Slung Low, it seems, can’t decide whether they want to succeed with smoke and mirrors or demonstrate their inevitable failure.

It’s a shame, because there’s evident potential behind the original commission. By doing far less, much more could have been achieved, but it requires the recognition that it is the real circumstances, rather than the fiction spun, that will set us on edge. Credit to the company for trying, but They Only Come at Night is a catalogue of miscalculations.

Review: Made In Russia, Chelsea Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

This is it. Tonight, from the modest stage of the Chelsea Theatre, Andrei Andrianov and Oleg Soulimenko will smash their way into mainstream European cultural consciousness. They’ve planned it: the perfect combination of Western and Eastern culture to ensure success, popularity and fame will follow.

Only, unfortunately, Andrei Arshavin and Mick Jagger couldn’t be here alongside them tonight. Likewise, Fydor Dostoyevsky and Julia Roberts. You see, their funding is modest; their popularity-level not quite high enough to beg favours from the rich and famous. Even Andrianov’s supposed father, Jean-Luc Goddard, and Soulimenko’s former co-star at the Bolshoi, the revered Maya Pliestskaya, couldn’t make it along. So, um, never mind.

Of course, Soulimenko and Andrianov are astute enough to know that familiar, accepted faces alone do not make for accessibility. Made In Russia subverts the very notion of cross-cultural identity against itself, undermining international presentation as a pretentious, even bourgeois, cultural practice. The need to label according to nationality or origin is, they suggest, preposterous and in doing so we seek only to confirm our own preconceptions about other cultures. In other words, we conceal our bigotry with heavy-handed pretences of liberalism. “Of course I understand Russian culture,” we decry, “Why, only the other week I saw a charming little piece of Russian contemporary dance on the South Bank. They even did the low-leg kicking dance. You know, the Cossack one. The Kalinka. The dance of the soldiers. You know. The one Michael Jackson does in the Black or White video.”

Employing ticklish tactics of reductio ad absurdum, Soulimenko and Andrianov pepper a reflexive examination of their artistic practice’s evolution (so conforming to “the Western value given to personal revelation onstage) with clumsy clichés. The stage is littered with analogue technology tarted up with geometric shapes and folksy textiles. They don body stockings and militaristic ballet-costumes. They speak in Russian only so as to sound mysterious and exotic.

As a double-act, there are certainly connections to The Right Size or New Art Club, sending themselves up as they go along. A wonderfully po-faced spoof of contact improvisation is followed by a “male intuitive duet in which two organisms explore a contemporary urban space.” But beneath the seemingly mocking is always the question of labelling. With such a multiplicity of cultural influences forming such an assortment of work, how can we pigeonhole their practice according to nationality alone. The arbitrary nature of such classification seems disrespectful and dismissive. We may laugh, but there is a definite tone of accusation at play.

If we can’t rely on conventional categories, then the question remains as to how to define an artist’s practice. Soulimenko and Andrianov supply no distinct answers. Perhaps they go so far as to dismiss the need for any form of taxonomy. Even their own daughters seem unable to really describe their work, proffering vagaries in a video-interview without seeming to undermine it. What matters are the propositions made, not the system of reference or regimentation. Not Made in Russia, then, but simply made.

Review: Live Long and Prosper, Chelsea Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

Knees buckling beneath him, Spock crumples towards death. His hand slides down the glass panel in front of him. Looking into the eyes of his friend and captain, James Kirk, he offers justification for his self-sacrifice: “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one.” With a defiant final gesture, an iconic palm with fingers split, he dies. Just outside a pound shop in Berlin.

Meanwhile, across town Frankie Dunn/Clint Eastwood removes the artificial windpipe of his million dollar baby, Maggie Fitzgerald/Hilary Swank in a laundrette and in the same city, next to an ice rink, illuminated by the soft glowing colours of a nearby funfair, Sergeant Keck/Woody Harrelson clutches his stomach and screams in agony, his platoon tending to him as he slips away.

Gob Squad’s twenty-minute film remakes seven such cinematic death sequences in and around Berlin’s public spaces. Playing on two screens, allowing comparison between the original and its everyday echo, it captures the sentiment and simultaneously sends it up: emotion marinated in ridicule.

However, it is the intellectual side of Live Long and Prosper that really thrives. Underneath the humour, there is serious investigation. The film almost turns against its own medium and outs its corruption of reality. The familiarity of these cinematic images – perfect tears rolling down perfect checks, empty eyes towards camera, red circles on white shirts – is here exposed as damning of itself. Life – death – doesn’t work like that. It is not neat; it is not eloquent; it is not tragedy-by-numbers. Yet these deaths, exquisitely framed and formed, feel real because they have come to supplant reality. After all, for most of us, death is only ever directly encountered on screens.

Hence, the very public nature of the space’s Gob Squad chose to invade. Their forcible intrusions of death, albeit fake, into the public sphere makes conspicuous that which is customarily tucked away. And yet, the city whirs on. In the background, suited legs and high heels catch the camera’s attention; shoppers browse shelves, tourists gaze out of windows, escalators climb on. The world is oblivious and, in its oblivion, the world becomes inhumane.

This makes for stark contrast with the figures within the scenes played, where, for the most part, the focus is on the process of dying as much as the moment of death. The majority of the selected scenes involve a degree of self-consciousness. Whether it is in the grandiose monologues to those gather, tearful farewells to a loved one or simply in the eyes of a paralysed, mute fallen champion, there is an awareness of death’s encroachment. Death is the antithesis of the life that surrounds these scenes. It is a certainty always unprepared for, and these final moments of acceptance (or non-acceptance) are a mark of the impassable threshold.

Life always goes on. Where the originals cut off, Gob Squad linger on breathing corpses and those left grieving. This they suggest is the burden of the living – the really living. Films need not mourn. Perhaps they leave tears to be wiped away, but they need not mourn. Death alters life and it does so inexorably. In those contorted faces, those cradling arms, there is a thin thread towards those that pass by the recreations, caught momentarily on camera and it is in death’s permanent effects, its echoes and remnants that drag unseen behind us. For the passer-by, for all of us, oblivion is necessary. Without it, the burden of the living would be too great to bear.

The Davids Reply...

And here, at last, is the response from David Jubb and David Micklem of the BAC to the inept ramblings of Roger Foss. As you can see below, I thoroughly enjoyed both A Small Town Anywhere and Home Sweet Home, though perhaps with one eye on the possibilities offered by interactive work. It's development over time, the way that it meets challenges such as those offered by Foss, are worth tracking.

Review: A Small Town Anywhere, Battersea Arts Centre

Written for Culture Wars


From my pulpit, I am engaged in a slur campaign. For no reason other than his political allegiances, I have written several libellous letters concerning the Mayor to my fellow townsfolk. All are, of course, left unsigned. After all, as the town’s priest, I cannot have suspicion turning my way. The following day, when the town council meet to banish one of this community, two names emerge – mine and his – before a surprising turnaround sees him escorted into the wilderness.

Do I feel guilty? Not a jot. Without the Mayor, my own political party of choice – the rigidly traditional Wrens – walk an easy path to victory and take control of the town. Personally, my own standing in the town increases, leaving me free to turn my slander on a new target: the quiet woodsman. Why? Because I can.

This is A Small Town Anywhere and, in it, suspicion and manipulation, paranoia and self-preservation are our rulers. Part balloon-debate, part role-playing game, part unscripted play, A Small Town Anywhere hands over the reins to its audience of participants, each of whom is given a role within the community, and allows history to be shaped by our decisions and snap judgements. Over two hours, a week passes and a dramatic one, at that, filled with elections, allegiances, coups, blossoming relationships and betrayals.

Ostensibly, we are trying to identify and cast out a figure known as The Raven, who knows a bit too much about each of us. I, for example, cannot have details of my affair with La Chantreuse emerge. Others have their own secrets to hide. However, in the course of proceedings, our individual objectives take over. In other words, as in life, there really is no ultimate, collective end. Instead, we find our own targets and employ tactics towards that end.

That this scope for free choice exists without scuppering the event towards chaos is a credit to how well-designed A Small Town Anywhere is as a game. We are observed and monitored through spyholes in the walls, through this never becomes intrusive, and both the disembodied, calming voice of the Town Cryer and the letters received each day serve to keep the game rumbling on apace. In short, the game can adjust to every possibility, including, on this occasion, a well-intentioned mutiny and a final refusal to sacrifice any member of the town.

The pacing is perfect, such that we are gradually immersed in a fiction to the point of investment. The functional rules are explained succinctly and delicately, though there is neither the possibility for nor the pressure of going wrong. Through email encounters with Henri, the small town historian, you gradually invent your character and a backstory of sorts. Yet, this is no Murder Mystery party; there is no sense of acting. You, yourself, are very much present in the small town. Your decisions remain yours, not those that your character might make. Not only does this remove awkward inhibitions, it allows the piece an ethical and political dimension beyond the bounds of the small town. You feel the weight of betrayals as much as the excitement of transgressions.

There are a few nagging concerns. The role of The Raven feels underdeveloped and, at times, a certain arbitrariness creeps in, such that targets are chosen simply to chose a target, but this, of course, brings its own implications. Equally, there is a sense that suspicion is often born of no more than prominence. It was interesting to note that those participants that stuck to running personal businesses were less likely to attract mistrust than those given public duties, such as the Mayor or the Publican. Perhaps, also, there is a feeling that the creators learn more than the players by seeing the range of possibilities and charting a wider history of the many different small towns that spring into existence.

Though I suspect that it may happen in due course, A Small Town Anywhere would benefit from sharing the outside perspective. At present, I know that, as the Priest, I acted less than impeccably with a certain relish. However, there is only a soft sense of specific wrongdoings and the effects of actions. Without some record or judgement post-event, one doesn’t become fully accountable for misdeeds committed. Indeed, it becomes far easier to dismiss A Small Town Anywhere as mere play, despite the strong moral, political and social elements that undoubtedly exist therein. All they need is backing up.

But what if it is just play? Would that be so bad? After all, it is in the bar afterwards – swapping stories, exchanging experiences and dissecting the event – that a real community comes into existence. As strangers connect afterwards, A Small Town Anyway grows in import and the game really does begin to matter.

Review: The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Vaudeville Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

Aside from the poetic magnetism of its central figure, Jim Cartwright’s 1992 play has little going for it. The entire narrative pivots on a cabaret act of seven or so minutes when the coy little Lancastrian girl reveals the incredible scope of her sound-shifting, chameleonic larynx. All we want to see is Little Voice’s star turn, rattling through the familiar voices of Shirley, Cilla, Edith and Judy. The rest feels like a dragging inconvenience.

Thankfully, Diana Vickers (her off tele) pulls the routine off with aplomb. Though her vocal simulacrums are never quite perfect enough to dumbfound, she consistently catches sufficient likeness to stand in for the greats. Equally, you only get half a sense of vocal chords possessed. The alien voices never quite burst forth intuitively and uncontrollably, but seem instead the result of quite conscious manipulation. The training process of rehearsals is always just about visible and slightly takes the edge of her rawness.

Let’s not get too excited about Vickers, though. Two other monologues – one sung, one ranted – she has to do little more than seek comfort in a baggy brown hoodie, stare at a record-player and be a bit sheepish.

Her casting, however, makes for a curious case. As a role, Little Voice demands a phenomenal vocal performance. Anything less and the entire play collapses, while to just about get away with it is to astound. In effect, we are applauding the talents of the actress for the routine performed and witnessed. It is the feat of cycling through incarnate incantations that impresses. However, the fiction leaves us predisposed to be impressed. We are inclined to applaud because actress and character are spun together. We see before us the reluctant performer that is Little Voice, we know of her father’s death and of her mother’s alcoholic awfulness. The narrative’s purpose is solely to sentimentalize the act and so prejudice us towards applause. In fact, Cartwright’s play is the fictional equivalent of the sob stories that clutter television talent shows.

The confusion, then, comes from Vickers’ own history. As an X Factor graduate herself, we cannot but associate her with Little Voice, as a young girl used to singing into hairbrushes, plucked from everyday life and bunged on a stage. We marvel at the actress, Little Voice and Diana Vickers all at once. The conflated whole strengthened by the mutual support of its constituent parts.

And yet, Vickers’ presence undermines the piece as a whole, given that she is a product of the very industry that Cartwright sets out to attack. Suddenly Ray Say (smartly played as slick as fudge by Marc Warren), the greasy small-town talent agent who ‘spots’ Little Voice on a late night visit to her mother, seems doubly vindicated; astutely ahead of his time, even. To be honest, this seems somehow symptomatic of the production’s true intentions whereby commerce is elevated over statement.

Perhaps, though, that’s fine. After all, Cartwright’s play is something of a fairy tale and, by ignoring the wider socio-political conditions of the time, director Terry Johnson has very deliberately placed the narrative in a bubble. Lesley Sharp meanwhile does her level best to make a pantomime of it all, over-dominating proceedings as LV’s monstrous mother, albeit, admittedly, without ever resorting to stereotype, and there’s strong comic support from James Cartwright and Rachel Lumberg.

Review: Room Temperature Romance, Barbican Pit Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

Examining those momentary nothings that, taken together, make up a lifelong friendship, Levantes Dance Theatre misjudge the balance of design and substance and so succumb to a trite tweeness. All girlish giggles and glances, Room Temperature Romance is the dance equivalent of knotted pinkies that promise to be friends forever. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Often it calls to mind a French and Saunders flashback sequence: the sort in which the pair run through fields or bake cakes, only for one to fall foul of a clumsy disposition and fall down a well or become clouded in flour. Then, of course, they turn to one another and laugh, still ‘bezzie mates’ in spite of mismatched natures.

Eleni Edipidi and Bethanie Harrison make a clownish double act. Sharing stark Frida Karlo monobrows drawn on in marker pen, they create flashes of touching comedy but lack a strictly defined hierarchy that would allow their routines to gain momentum. The contrast of Harrison’s flickering eyes and Edipidi’s doltish, empty gaze simply isn’t enough. In fact, the whole piece has a soft focus fuzziness that prevents it from really achieving anything more than a pink and fluffy feel.

As dancers, they veer towards the distinctly unvirtuosic. The tatty synchronicity and dumpy clunkiness adds a certain everyday charm, matched by the doddering uncertainty of their older counterparts, who interrupt proceedings to stage manage with an air of fond nostalgia for mischief past. Too often, however, their choreography relies on monotonous call and response. It follows a pattern of withering domination and wilting submission, where Edipidi’s doe-eyed mimicry of Harrison inevitably relies on offering something a bit less good.

This monotony is, however, concealed – at least, on the surface – by the boldness of Room Temperature Romance’s design. The vibrancy of its colours and the cut of its clothes give it a sumptuous visual element. The emphasis on fashion, however, detracts from the bodies themselves, which seem mere motors for swishing hems. The result is to sap the instinctive oomph of movement, to stop us swaying subconsciously along in our seats.

Add to this too much stage business, noticeably overplayed clowning and hackneyed discussions of SMS etiquette and Room Temperature Romance drags.

In its final moments, as the stage fills with miniature mechanical pigs and the pair down Guiness in frosty pink gowns against a deep turquoise background, the piece reveals what might have been. It is a sequence at once surreal, real and fictional, sparking images and ideas of recognisable friendships while also turning an eye on itself.

Instead, Room Temperature Romance takes a widescreen view and fails to find the details that can turn its nothings into something special.

Review: Raoul, The Barbican

Written for Culture Wars

Raoul is not a one man show. If it seems that way it is because its cast of hundreds happen to share a single body. James Thiérée is legion. There are times when each of his limbs seem controlled by a different consciousness: his arm slapping his astonished face whilst the other tears at it like a protective bystander. Elsewhere he genuinely seems to multiply – as if by mitosis – and shapeshift; his body morphs into all manner of animals, objects and even elemental states. To watch him is to be astounded by a fluid being unbounded by its own human limitations.

And yet, as a show, Raoul gains its weight precisely from its humanity. It wrangles with an overwhelming existential crisis, full of fear, loathing and furious exasperation. To belittle is as spectacle alone is to ignore the fact that it is a circus of the self.

On entering we are faced with a jaunty cubist landscape of white sheets that seems a shipwreck of twisted sails or a theatre torn down, its curtain railings come unhinged. Beneath them is a shack of scaffolding poles, itself filled with musky knick-knacks. This is the isolated Raoul’s castle. It protects him from both the world and another figure: a hostile self that lays it siege, charging at the walls and forever gaining entry. The two Raouls are inextricable. No matter how the first tries to escape – hiding in oil drums, cocooning himself in bed, pondering himself in the mirror – the other always catches him unguarded. Raoul’s is an existence stalked by his own self, confronted by an ugly, unwanted doppelganger at every turn as he attempts to fend of crisis with self-definition.

There is a certain tragedy about this first Raoul. He is a man always at odds with himself; a hapless figure forever tying himself in knots. He tries to cross his legs only for them to slip off one another. He tries to play music, but gets only the grainy crackle of scratched vinyl or the final combative blasts of an elusive symphony. His reflexes are unexpectedly reversed and his even his clothes prove evasive. Thiérée’s dazzling skill as physical comedian, his deftness with repetition, never absolves this tragedy. We laugh just as much as we associate with this man, caught as he is in a cycle of unattainable objectives. Ever tried and all that.

Alongside this is Raoul’s crippling self-consciousness, not only in the form of his stalking self, but also in our presence. At several points the house lights bath us in light and he stands at the edge of the stage on show, vulnerable, judged and paralysed.

Yet, Raoul must duel not only with himself, but also his environment. As his house diminishes and decays, the world becomes ever more watery. Oversized creatures, airy elephants and metallic fish – junkyard creations, all very much manmade – approach, sometimes inquisitively, sometimes threatening. His clowning follows a steady pattern. He discovers, shares with us, loses control and moves on, such that the universe seems wondrous but beyond dominion.

I suppose the show hinges on the credit it is given by its audience, whether will look beyond a clown and see a philosopher. For me, the leap was unavoidable, but I can understand how others will see only a man engaged in human origami. Perhaps this is true of all circus or visual theatre. Either way, there can be no doubting the skill of Thiérée’s performance. What does undermine it slightly is the ‘how did they do that factor’ – our need to understand the mechanics of an illusion, such that when the timing is the slightest fraction out, we spot the trapdoors that makes his duplication possible.

But then there is also an honesty to Raoul. At its end, with the white box become black void, he takes flight unexpectedly. Perched at the stage’s edge, he rises slowly, inexplicably, faster and faster, spinning up a cyclone onstage. Then the lighting shifts from illusion to revelation. Our eyes become accustomed to the dark and we make out two stage hands frantically operating a crane. Order is restored. It is as if Thiérée throws us a wink. We know that our eyes have often been tricked, but here is his confession. Even as he flies above our heads, Thiérée admits that the theatre cannot make a man fly, but also – wonderfully – it can.

The stage makes possible and Raoul revels in its own fluid liminality. It is filled with mirth and melancholy, humanity and beauty, small triumphs and inevitable failure. Afterwards, coursing the city and boarding the tube, Raoul’s world of fluctuation lingers. It may take a while to readjust to the tedious solidity of ours.

Home Sweet Home

I was utterly charmed by Home Sweet Home, which popped into the BAC this week and sowed seeds from which two communities took root and grew: one minature the other full-sized It's a delightful piece from Subject to Change, which allows us a glimpse of fantasy in a real-world Sim City. You enter, chose a building to call your own - from rackety terraced housing to exclusive shopping plaza or houseboat - pick a patch of land and sign the deeds. What emerges from the flat-pack identikit card buildings is a fully fledged town, complete with communal play areas, peace protests and a postal system.

Its joy comes from a spirit of generosity and invention. No creation, whether glittery or glum, is looked down upon. Everything has its place next to glorious cardboard reconstrustions of Battersea Power Station and the BAC itself. By the end, after four days of glitterstorm in the Old Town Hall, a new Clapham has come to life. Tiny traffic lights flicker, brothels are teeming and story shops have sprung up all over.

As for me, well, I brought a little urban decay. (I meant to take a photo, but it came out as a video clip. Ho hum.)

Review: The Factory's Hamlet, Arch 635

Written for Culture Wars

Even for the most well-drilled company, Hamlet is no mean feat. Exalted to the point of petrifying, bursting at the seams with iconic lines, lofty philosophy and high emotions, it is a three hour wrestle with the human condition. Imagine, then, being cast as the despairing Dane a mere five minutes before your first entrance, armed with only the text as learnt by rote, in a production that no more knows its course than you do. As if that weren’t enough, someone’s just handed you a giant polystyrene skull as your first prop.

The Factory’s Hamlet, clearly, is a gargantuan task. For the past two years an eclectic collective of actors have been conjuring Hamlet anew in different locations. Sometimes they play on a stage, using whatever set happens to be there. Sometimes in a found space. Tonight, we are in a converted railway arch in Clapham with a bar modishly dressed in black and neon. Passing trains rumble overhead piercing the play with ominous bursts of thunder.

It works thus: having each learnt several parts, actors are pitted against one another in bouts of rock, paper, scissors to determine the casting. Audience members provide the props and move between acts to reconfigure the playing space. After a ten-second countdown, it begins.

So it is that the ghost bursts in with a head of molten armour fashioned from tin-foil, that Prince Fortinbras is crowned with a novelty hippo shower-cap and that Hamlet and Laertes engage in a duel of pulling power, having plucked out two audience members for a tragical snog-off. This is no “sterile promontory,” but a world of waxy surrealism: wayward and stalked by madness.

There are, unsurprisingly, both gains and losses in this mode of presentation.

As an audience, our attention is split. Events multiply. We see both the world of the play and the actual space in which it appears; both characters and actors. We immerse ourselves in the story and simultaneously admire the telling of it at one remove. It is as if a version plays out in our heads to which we become emotionally connected even as we disconnect from the one in front of us, amused by the jarring discrepancies of image and text as, say, Hamlet brandishes a dainty fan in threat or Barnardo cowers beneath a cycle helmet.

But, isn’t this what happens in any theatre? Do we not watch the action behind our eyes whilst that before us fails? This honesty marks The Factory’s house-style. Aware of its own ridiculousness, it seems to observe itself scornfully even as it invests with wholehearted earnestness.

With such emphasis on the imagined narrative, the play becomes clearer than ever before – with the exception, tonight, of a frayed third act, which buckles in the tricksy playing space of the bar and the decision to have two actors share the titular role. With images offering little assistance or correspondence, one’s ear tunes in to the text with unusual diligence, pricking at its nuances and repetitions. An unexpected purity, even faithfulness, emerges whereby we receive the text almost as if reading it at our own pace.

Alongside this, the display of choice somehow distils the play. Given the obviousness of what might have been - that is, the continuous sense of parallel worlds and paths not taken – we receive the play almost as an abstract idea. Each attempt seems to contain every possible production. Absent ideas of characters seem to hover over the heads of those embodying them, almost as if we witness the corruption inherent in the process of actualisation. What we see seems to directly reveal the playwright’s original. There can be no directorial intention, no forced interpretation or imposition, just the play as written and the openly messy particulars on which it is carried.

That said, beyond the refreshed perspective, we learn little that we didn’t already know. The Factory rely on our foreknowledge of the play. We are forced to make our own sense, to complete the jigsaw for ourselves. The form itself offers no comment on the content – any text could be tackled similarly without loss. To watch is to discover anew, but also to clarify, refine and confirm ideas already held.

With this loss of directorial intention comes also a weakening of the narrative arc. Individual scenes may become clarified but the sense of structured development of both characters and plot disappears. The sense of impending tragedy never grows in momentum and both Hamlet’s vengeful desires and his madness seem somewhat scattergun as a result, flashing here and there, but often forgotten. With this, the absence of design, there creeps the slightest hint of monotony.

Does the improvisation become wearisome? Perhaps, but only where it does not fizz with inspiration. As the play proceeds we demand more ingenuity and wit of the actors. Not least because, over time, we spot the presence of preconceived tactics. We begin to doubt the total immediacy as momentary decisions seem born of tactics, as if the company have identified ideal openings for something, anything, to be decided upon and determined that some repeated gesture or other is needed to convey a particular thread of ideas, death, for instance, or madness.

However, given the mammoth nature of the task, such tactics are forgivable by virtue of their necessity. It is harder to excuse the inconsistencies of style. Where at times The Factory seek to play scenes according to naturalistic motivations, at others they play to illustrate and at others still to postulate some concept or other. There is also the sense of opportunities missed in their handling of the audience. After all, part of the joy of improv is our role as challenge-setters. The event could benefit from having even less control over itself.

Nonetheless, it works. It could be improved, but it proves enjoyable, exciting and urgent and demonstrates The Factory as a necessary point on the theatrical landscape. The future development of their practice is worth following with a beady eye, as they are a company underpinned by theatrical enquiry providing a rickety, risky bridge between mainstream and experimentation.