Theatre
REVIEW NEW PLAY SEA AND LAND AND SKY Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 23 Oct ●●●●● ‘The only thing that scares us is a dying child,’ says Carmen Pieraccini as Lily, a Scottish nurse facing a burning village on the World War II frontline. It is an image of wartime heroism we are not used to seeing. In Abigail Docherty’s play, winner of the Tron’s Open Stage competition, the male soldiers are bystanders in a battle being fought with bandages, blood and bravado by the women. However ghastly it gets – and in Docherty’s vision, it gets very ghastly – the nurses are there to pick over the corpses, deal with severed limbs and clear up the gory mess.
Rather than waiting for post-traumatic stress to set in, they experience the full psychotic disruption of war right there on the battlefield. Contradicting the Florence Nightingale image of the
stoic nurse, the play is historically unconvincing, despite being based on real wartime diaries. It is hard to buy into the idea of a frontline populated entirely by mentally unstable nurses, still less into the thought of an early-20th century woman using language along the lines of ‘stinking fucking cunting fuckers’. Even so, there is a metaphorical truth in Docherty’s vision of the emotional impact of war. This is not a story of machismo, nor even of war-poet pathos, but of deep psychological disturbance.
There are consequences, however. The women do not Structurally, however, the play reaches this point
take the same physical toll as the men, but mentally, they are broken by the experience. There are times when Sea and Land and Sky takes on a heightened hallucinatory air as the nurses’ nightmarish experience infects the whole play. One digs in the earth in search of a lost lover, another offers her body to a soldier just to feel alive, another still loses herself in delirium. somewhere in the middle of the first act and has little distance to go thereafter. One bombardment is much like another, just as one traumatised nurse is much like another. Docherty’s writing has a keen sense of poetry, but it is more contemplative than dramatic, giving us individually pretty speeches that have little narrative momentum. (Mark Fisher)
REVIEW NEW PLAY PLAYBACK The Briggait, Glasgow, until Sat 23 Oct ●●●●●
This youthful, multicultural urban drama by Davey Anderson and Ankur Productions – the culmination of the PANGAA urban arts project – proves an impressive advertisement for the sort of large-scale play a bold and ambitious company can stage in the cavernous spaces of The Briggait. The huge warehouse at the rear of the building has been converted into the mean streets of Pollokshields, the setting for a promenade performance billed as ‘part gig, part road movie, part theatre’. Outcast Harun (Asif Khan) seems locked on a crash course with oblivion after being taken under the wing of his drug-dealing uncle Shakil (Paul Chaal). That is, until Rhia (Sharita Scott), a similarly lonely soul who has inherited her grandmother’s extrasensory talents, makes a fateful intervention.
Zipping along to a live hip hop soundtrack voiced by beatboxer Bigg Taj and former X Factor finalist Nikitta Angus, Paddy Cunneen’s lively direction makes full use of the venue, with multi-level sets and video projections onto the walls. Themes of gang culture and knife crime are overplayed and the contrivance of Rhia’s spooky clairvoyance – a tool for focusing on how a split second of good or bad judgment can make or break a young life – prove insufficient in delivering Playback’s message. But the narrative remains immersive throughout, and a break-dancing section midway as well as a bumping solo turn from Bigg Taj underscore the fact that this is as much about giving a platform to young Glaswegian urban artists as anything else. (Malcolm Jack)
PREVIEW CONTEMPORARY DANCE IGNITE Platform, Glasgow, Fri 29 Oct, then touring
Despite some of the most famous dancers in history being male, the dance world still struggles with the misconception that it’s ‘for girls’. The rise of hip hop has done much to address this, but for other dance styles, reaching out to boys and young men is a daily challenge. Having already had some success in this area, contemporary dance companies YDance and Smallpetitklein both applied for funding to take their work further. ‘We wanted to deliver similar projects,’ explains Andy Howitt of YDance, ‘so Creative Scotland (then the Scottish Arts Council) suggested we work together. Like us, Smallpetitklein has a commitment to working with young people, so we were more than happy to join forces to offer boys and young men across Scotland a range of exciting dance experiences.’ Comprising two new works, Touch Paper choreographed by Howitt and Trigger by Thomas Small of Smallpetitklein, IGNITE celebrates the powerful combination of masculinity and dance, and will be performed by an all-male cast. The works themselves blend humour with speed and athleticism – but aside from being entertaining, the whole project has an important agenda.
‘IGNITE is all about breaking down the barriers that typically surround boys and
dance,’ says Howatt. ‘And we’ve been reaching out to boys that wouldn’t normally consider dance as an option by running taster sessions led by male dancers, who can also be strong male role models.’ (Kelly Apter)
S S O R W E R D N A
86 THE LIST 21 Oct–4 Nov 2010