Photo: Toast Coetzer
Arriving at the theatre to see the conspiracy of clowns’ Pictures of You, one is given a button- badge that says ‘listen with your eyes’. To this could be added ‘look with your ears’ for James Webb has created a loaded and evocative stereo soundscape that accompanies the mimed action throughout this theatrical gem.
Liezl de Kock (as Janet) and Dorian Burstein (as Frank) wear larger-than-life character masks that seem to change expression in the chiaroscuro of the spotlights playing on their rich dappled surfaces. A simple but effective revolving set, together with the masks and a puppet designed by Janni Younge, complete the theatrical kit with which Rob Murray has devised an innovative and riveting 70 minutes of pure theatre.
The themes of security and freedom within love and of that love within the world, forms the basis for exploration for the piece. Frank and Janet are a regular suburban couple. A criminal attack upon Janet in their home derails the relationship, but what it in fact does is bring to a head the routine rut into which their relationship has lapsed. Frank drinks and has fantasies about another woman, brilliantly evoked by a picture on the wall that comes to life, until he realises that Janet is the woman he truly desires.
The story itself is fairly obvious, but the layered rendering and the stage business makes this an elevating theatrical treat.
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When an annoying Australian reporter asked Noël Coward to say something witty, he simply replied, “Kangaroo.” Words are funny things. They conjure up associations and images; they evolve through a series of aberrations, cultural mutations and human selection. Into this fascinating world, The Dog’s Bollocks ventures at a tongue-twisting lick.
It takes a class act like Gaetan Schmid to transform a language lecture into an hilarious one-man show. The trick is to turn the situation inside out. Schmid creates a predicament. Our lecturer is an eccentric Eastern European professor, billed as Dr Emiritus, with a great knowledge of language, but a poor facility for speaking English. We briefly fear the evening will descend in to Volapük. But Emiritus resorts to physical antics, a blackboard, lots of chalk and a condom. In the end, according to this philologist, we discover most words have their origins in sexual connotations.
Schmid is abetted by director Rob Murray, who successfully keeps the pace frenetic and the energy bordering on volatile – an imperative given the undramatic scenario.
Perhaps Schmid stumbled across the title The Dog’s Bollocks when researching his previous popular comedy The Beer Show (Wychwood Brewery in Oxfordshire used to produce an extra special bitter beer called ‘Dog’s Bollocks’). In both these comedies, Schmid irreverently traces the entire history of Western man, including his civilising mission. This is the most successful part of the show: when Schmid has a dramatic thread and is able to relate the evolution of a word to a mini-storyline. In the Beer Show there was a Babylonian discovering his fermenting hops; here we have the colonists misunderstanding the aborigines before killing them off, and by implication their language too.
The script is quite a feat of imagination, not to forget recall, stringing together as it does an hour-long web of words, driven by associations. The challenge for Schmid is to somehow do this and tell one story. Then he’ll have a tour de force.
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Bird’s Eye View is the latest work from Rob Murray’s theatre collective From the Hip : Khulumakahle (a conspiracy of clowns). It won the AFDA Best Production Award last year. Their story telling techniques and the sophistication of their narrative alphabet has come a long way since their first tentative steps with another environmental work Touch Wood. Yet, Bird’s doesn’t quite live up to the expectations created by their last production, Water Pockets, a beguiling mix of gentle clowning and open, straightforward dialogue.
Murray possesses a fervent imagination that sometimes trips over his narrative structure. As a result, the show suffers from too many endings, a common enough pitfall in this kind of saga. It unfolds episodically according to a formulaic (yet satisfying) adventure story logic. Though too predictable and frenetic for the theatre, it would be wholly successful in the cinema. Towards the end, various satirical reference are suddenly introduced, which are humorous, sometimes corny, but don’t sit comfortably with the fantasy world already established.
There is certainly no lack of commitment to the work from energetic physical theatre performers Porteus Xandau (Spike) and Keenan Arrison (Tjurp). They play two daredevil weaverbirds who must dice with death to save the world suffering the effects of global warming and rapacious fast food corporations. It will work best as young people’s theatre.
The choreography is as tight as ever, and the two actors equally and well matched. The Achilles heal however is the forced accents and the decision to caricature the parts. The intention is to clown, but unfortunately the effect is to falsify the emotions and flatten the work. The environmental message didn’t quite go over when I found myself wishing for a pellet gun.
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