Monday, August 08, 2005

Friches Theatre Urbain

The Scottish Play.

Up and down the South Bank as part of the "Watch This Space" National Theatre events.

With masks of wolves and other creatures.

With cloaks.

With puppets. (Including some disturbing dismemberment of puppet/dolls as the murder of the children took place: innards pulled out... It was easy to forget it was just fabric)

With a giant hand being wheeled about and random divergences 'from' the script to reference contemporary events.

With dialogue delivered in English, French and Spanish.

On stilts.

That's ON STILTS! Dancing up and down the South Bank trailing fascinated and bewildered spectators in their wake!

And it had a musical soundtrack that would not have gone amiss as part of the FM Einheit work of Dante's Inferno (Einsturzende Neubauten guy - left because there was too melody in their work and not enough "muttering and clanking").

Interestingly, FM Einheit also did a similar work on Faust. I say interestingly because I now find these pics of Friches Theatre Urbain doing Faust (it will give you a flavour of what the performance along the South Bank looked like).

All in all, blinding and wonderful. The sort of thing that theatre - especially outdoor theatre - should always endeavour to do: amaze.

1 comment:

JoeinVegas said...

Down in San Diego in Balboa Park there is a large theatre complex - the Old Globe Theatre (http://www.balboapark.org/) built to supposedly look like the English Old Globe Theatre. During the summer the outdoor stage is used for presentations - we saw John Goodman once, and one year A Midsummer's Night's Dream - outdoors among the trees with fairies floating among the audience. Really nice to hear Shakespear outside. But no stilts.