Scenes From An Execution

Scenes From An Execution (Tooth and Sinew) runs at the Old Fitzroy Hotel from May 13 – 31 2014. By Howard Barker, directed by Richard Hilliar.

Scenes From An Execution is an incredibly rich, textured piece of theatre. There is so much here to chew on, intellectually and emotionally. At its heart is an enthralling female character, prickly, complex and utterly engaging. The show raises fascinating questions about art and authority which I’ll continue to mull over for some time.

The play is set in Venice in 1571. Controversial artist Galactia (Lucy Miller) is commissioned by the Doge (Mark Lee) to paint a picture commemorating the Battle of Lepanto, one of Venice’s most comprehensive victories over the Ottoman Empire. He expects her to conform to certain artistic boundaries – to celebrate the victory and the glory of Venice. But Galactia has a different story in mind. After an encounter with Prodo (Peter Maple), a war veteran made ridiculous by the arrow shaft stuck in his head, she decides to paint a portrait of the battle as it really was: a bloody, merciless slaughter.

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away and spoil it – particularly as this is a show well worth seeing for yourselves – but the ongoing story of the painting and its contentious ownership raises questions about art and intention that I’m very interested in. This play might be about sixteenth century Venice, but these are questions with ongoing resonance. I’m not sure whether there was a similar moment in art history, but I am familiar with some of the literary theory around these questions. Schleiermachian hermeneutics, one of the early forms of literary criticism, placed the author at the centre of the work. In this model, the reader became a sort of detective, puzzling over the text in an effort to reach the author’s true intentions. But in the twentieth century, the New Criticism emerged, which centred the text, rather than the author. In 1968, Roland Barthes famously declared that the author was dead. Michel Foucault made a similar claim when he called the author a function.

While this is congruent with literary development at the time, it is also not coincidental that this is a period when marginalised writers’ voices started to be heard: voices from writers disenfranchised by their race, class, orientation and/or gender. The dead author trope became another way of marginalising them.  We see something similar in Scenes From An Execution, particularly in the second act. Galactia is so certain her work belongs to her, but a new mode of criticism is emerging, represented here by the critic Rivera (Katherine Shearer).

Let’s talk a bit about Galactia, this fascinating female artist, and her relationship with her work. Her character arc in this play is remarkable, centring as it does around art and her pursuit of truth rather than her relationships, as so many female arcs do. (I have absolutely zero problems with female arcs centring on relationships, but this should not be the only option open to women.) Indeed, the most important relationship she has in this play is not with her lover Carpeta (Jeremy Waters), but with her art – and, by extension, with truth. Galactia believes she is doing a brave and noble thing with her art: an important thing, an incontrovertible thing, an intrinsically political thing. But she does not take into account the fact that ownership of her work might be challenged. I found the way this idea of truth and art is treated and mobilised in Scenes From An Execution so, so interesting. I want to say a lot more about it, but a) a lot of it involves Foucault and that’s a bit boring, and b) I don’t want to spoil the show.

This is a really good production of a very difficult script. It is very intense the whole way through and perhaps could have benefited from a little more light and shade, but when I think about where that stillness could go, I’m at a loss. Like Galactia, this play is relentless – and that is part of its appeal. Director Richard Hilliar has put together a great ensemble – Lucy Miller as Galactia and Jeremy Waters as Carpeta are particular standouts. There is so much going on in this piece, and it would have been easy for it to get bogged down in its own verbiage. But happily, this does not happen. I found Scenes From An Execution utterly fascinating. Make time to go and see it.

Decadence

Decadence runs at the Old 505 Theatre from December 4-7 2013. By Steven Berkoff, directed by Serhat Caradee.

Decadence is one of Berkoff’s least performed plays, perhaps because it is hella difficult. Written largely in pseudo-Shakespearean verse, it is an immense undertaking for two actors. On stage the whole time, they must play two different couples: one, a wealthy, upper-class pair of adulterous lovers, and the other, a working class pair with murderous and revolutionary tendencies (or so they say). It is so, so tough – but happily, this production from A Priori Projects is a great one. Searing, scintillating, this is Berkoff done so, so well.

This particular production has a bit of a history. It began life at the Sydney Fringe Festival this year, where it took home an award in the theatre category. (I didn’t see it then, as I was overseas, but if it was as good then as it is now, then that award is well-deserved.) In March, it will tour to the Adelaide Fringe Festival. It’s playing a limited season at the Old 505 now as a fundraiser for that tour. I’m not sure if tickets are still available, but if you can’t get to the Adelaide Fringe, then you should do your absolute best to get to this in its short run. It’s worth it.

Decadence is, like so much of Berkoff’s work, preoccupied with questions of class. It lambasts the wealthy upper classes: Helen and Steve, our rich couple here, have everything. They are so consumed by their ennui all that they can do is consume more and more, grinding the faces of the poor. They tell each other stories of their decadent adventures, whether hunting or fucking or generally exploiting. They are so bored they almost seem to forget they are having a love affair: even the frisson of excitement that comes from their adultery cannot penetrate their boredom. All that is left is for them to suck more and more into their (figurative) gaping maws, as brilliantly literalised by the scene towards the end where they go to a high class restaurant and gorge themselves on food and champagne until they are sick.

Our innate sense of narrative structure makes us feel like they should be punished, but they never are. The working class couple, Les and Sybil, plot Steve’s demise, but they never actually do anything about it. Les is all bark, no bite: he certainly talks a good revolutionary game, and he is full of ideas of how to knock Steve off, from the relatively realistic through to the absolutely ridiculous, but he is nothing more than that – talk. Unlike Helen and Steve, these two fuck – all the time – but it is more out of the excitement over what they plan to do than anything else. When their plans prove to be impotent, so too quickly fades their sex lives. This is not the moral poor common in so many other works, who are exploited and downtrodden by a demonised rich, but a poor who are uncomfortably complicit in their oppression: the rich are useless, and yet the working class don’t do anything about. “I am not yet a desperate man,” Les declaims, making us wonder what a truly desperate man would look like.

This is a scorching satire of capitalism: not just the external trappings, but the internalisation of it. The team behind this production have clearly understood this and have delivered a sharp, incisive production. Serhat Caradee’s direction is deceptively simple and very effective, and Rowan McDonald and Katherine Shearer both deliver outstanding performances. (The only criticism I have is that sometimes when Shearer goes into her upper vocal registers it is hard to understand what she is saying, but this is a relatively easy fix.) This is really biting theatre, deeply political and disquieting. A Priori have put together a great production, and I hope their tour to Adelaide goes swimmingly. Highly recommended.