So the show is I can`t really objectively review a execution by a society who I`ve seen nearly twenty times when, in a way, they`re almost all a continuance of the same performance, it`s just sometimes they`re all sat down talking quietly and sometimes they`re all running around and shouting.
I was talking to Tim Etchells, their director/writer/dramaturg/top lad afterwards and he said it`s like a real slow soap opera, and he`s right, the relationships between the performers evolve like those in a soap. It was fascinating watching Jerry being in direction and pushing the newbies about when it doesn`t appear so long since he was the debutante being abused. But still, Richard is the low to separate from the initial structure, Cathy and Claire hold everything together and Terri is the chaos provider in the slightly shorter skirt, "what if heroin wasn`t addictive?" This is, in my personal taxonomy of forced entertainment shows at least, a shouty show rather than a talky show, but it`s often better realised than the final match of shouty shows, the medicine is often more kindly and less obvious (no 20th Century Boy here, just random Japanese lounge tracks). It`s knockabout, in a safe way, not weighed down by Big Themes (although obviously it`s still all about death, as all Forced Ents shows are*). I marvel if the discipline of having to learn dances has made them really cut to the track with the other bits, to be more focused on what these characters are on stage for, which I thought World in Pictures (the last big shouty show from 2006) in detail was lacking.I was laughing throughout, although many of these jokes may have been entirely in my head.
What was fascinating was the amount of walkouts. There`s always one or two who have seen a non-specific review or get on with their mates and require A Play, which it isn`t, but there were probably twenty who were mainly, according to my sources, students from one particular performance course [cough]Sussex[cough] which I find mind-boggling. When we first saw forced ents in 92 (possibly 93) we spent the remainder of our time at college shamelessly ripping them off because they opened so many new doors for us, so to pass out an hour in (the evidence was 100 minutes without interval) is, at its basest, to miss stuff you can nick. If there are more exciting and innovative companies out there I actually need to bed about them, is it only because the performers are mainly in their 40s now? That The Kids don`t get it? But really, who does theatre (based performance, for lack of a better phrase) better?
I hold on meaning to send Stewart Lee an email asking if he`s aware of them as heavy chunks of the philosophical parts of his (groundbreaking, awesome) book sound remarkably like Tim Etchells` approach to performance, I marvel if this is region of the overarching "Mark E Smith is the core of all that is interesting" theory as both Stew and Tim have confessed to early Fall performances having a big influence on their thinking_
The Kick of it All continues at the Riverside, Hammersmith until 6 November, then Meet in Manchester, Rotterdam and Vienna!
Both photos by Hugo Glendinning.
*the 90s shows were about drinking, sex and death, but drink and sex are less apparent now, particularly drinking
CarsmileSteve in FT /The Brown Wedge • // • 27 views • Share/Save