www.list.co.uk/theatre
PREVIEW CONTEMPORARY DANCE TROOP Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 6 Dec
Contemporary dance is known for many things, but its use of feathers, sequins and bows isn’t one of them. Choreographer Jane Turner, however, is no stranger to a well-placed high heel, having spent several years as a showgirl in Barcelona’s Scala Ballet. Since forming her own
contemporary dance company in the 1990s, Turner has eschewed her glittery past in spangly leotards – until now. ‘I was a showgirl in the 1980s and I think I had somehow repressed the memory of that,’ says Turner. ‘I’d also done panto as a kid and just saw both of those things as naff. But I’ve realised that they still came out in the work I’ve created over the years and that I’m quite theatrical.’
Turner’s willingness to embrace her past led to Troop, a colourful look at the showgirl lifestyle through the lens of modern dance. Featuring six female dancers and two male, set against a backdrop of real-time images, the show acknowledges the physical beauty of the performers while allowing them to be real people with real lives.
‘Each dancer becomes a character and we explore why they’re in that line-up,’ explains Turner. ‘So they’re viewed much more as an individual and you really see who that performer is. Contemporary dance neutralised gender, so that women weren’t judged on what they looked like – and I’m reassessing some of that and saying this is gorgeous dancing and they look fantastic.’ (Kelly Apter)
Theatre
PREVIEW NEW WORK SPECTACULAR Tramway, Glasgow, Thu 4–Sat 6 Dec
Contemporary Western Culture is at a greater distance from death than any that parallels or precedes it. While we endlessly represent death in movies, television and the theatre, these fictionalised, sanitised versions of an event all of us are moving toward barely touch the reality of the experience. Even our news coverage is edited for political reasons to avoid the real-life carnage that news cameras capture in such events as the Vietnam war. Meanwhile, the removal of all of the context in which the act of death occurs proceeds apace in endless spectacular, violent Hollywood films. In this context, Spectacular is the perfect title for
Forced Entertainment’s new piece on death and how we represent it in the theatre and the mass media. In it, a figure dressed in a skeleton suit bounces onto the stage and performs a big theatrical schtick, yet begins to wonder why the audience is reacting differently tonight. He reflects upon previous nights, and seems to
expect show tunes and dancing girls, but is accompanied only by a prone figure, a woman seeming to exhale her last tortured breaths into a microphone. Tim Etchells, long-time director of this acclaimed and innovative company explains: ‘A lot of this is about the contrast of what we expect from a show and what the reality represented really is.’ The Forced Entertainment team often display a
certain rawness in their work, which explores what we expect from theatre, using techniques such as pastiche and parody to achieve profound effects. The process, for Etchells, is as important as the finished product, and is perhaps key to the freshness of the work. We tend to start from a theme, but no other ideas,’ he says. ‘For me that’s how we work. We chat away, for example on this occasion, about what it would mean to die, and from there we develop those ideas over weeks. Sometimes we go back to the first idea, sometimes it changes completely. But we don’t sit down and say, before we start, this is going to be a play about blah, blah, blah.’ (Steve Cramer)
PREVIEW MUSICAL THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK Playhouse, Edinburgh, Wed 10 Dec–Sat 3 Jan
The compelling formula of Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City can be traced to US writer John Updike’s 1984 novel, The Witches of Eastwick, in which three frustrated women invoke cosmic powers to summon their ideal man. They are delivered by Darryl Van Horne, a memorably cruel, enigmatic character played by Jack Nicholson in the 1987 film and now portrayed by Wet Wet Wet frontman Marti Pellow in a revived musical incarnation.
Rebecca Thornhill, here playing Sukie Rougemont for the second time after the production’s London debut in 2000, is amazed by Pellow’s performance: ‘I’ve worked with him before [in Chicago], but he’s bowled me over in this one. He’s got so much imagination.’ She admits the subject matter can be disturbing: ‘I read the book a long time ago and it was so overly descriptive, I had to put it down. I think the film is quite disgusting and scary too. It’s not something I would have chosen to adapt as a musical – but somehow it works.’
Thornhill appears to relish The Witches of Eastwick’s current success, eagerly anticipating the company’s stint at the Edinburgh Playhouse over the festive season. And, despite the production’s explicit subject matter, she’s convinced that it will survive in the increasingly crowded musical world: ‘Older musicals [like West Side Story] tend to stay the same for many years. Because this is a new piece, hopefully people will keep developing it. They’ll rewrite and change it and it’ll be something that endures.’ (Yasmin Sulaiman)
27 Nov–11 Dec 2008 THE LIST 81