What is normality? It's when things are
usual and expected. But, how can that noun exist when life can change in the
blink of an eye?
Chris Thorpe has collaborated with Jorge
Andrade from Mala Voadora Company to explore these existential ideas in this
evening's performance of Your Best Guess.
It's a show for adults who constantly plan
for the future (which really is all of us). Sometimes plans turn out how you
want them to and sometimes they don't, whether that be for the best or not.
Life changes, relationships change, even to the point where before you know it,
it's "like a different film". The performance centered around the true
life story of Chris Thorpe and his partner Laura, and their children Michael
and Lily. Intersecting this are anecdotes performed by Jorge Andrade,
investigating unpredictability, some of them are about ghost cities, sport betting,
and suicide.
As soon as I arrived into Home's main
theatre space, Thorpe and Andrade were already onstage ready to perform. As everyone
else arrived, Thorpe greeted the audience and played songs requested by them. I
had some ideas about what he might have been trying to do creatively with this
opening, however it soon became clear that he was just trying to establish an intimate
environment. While this was successful, I did think more song requests could
have been taken, and Thorpe could have talked to the audience a little bit more.
For the most part, the show was in an interview
style. Andrade asked Thorpe questions
about his life, which was effective as this format teased lots of detail out of
his story. Andrade had the role of an audience member, an outside observer asking
the questions we wanted to hear the answers to. There were some random and
insightful observations made about life, which occasionally provided dry and
dark humour. The script was rich with an eclectic variety of writing styles:
from spoken work, to song lyrics, to a goodbye letter. I'm not going to reveal the
context surrounding this letter, but the performance beautifully built up to
the scene where Thorpe read it out. It was a wholeheartedly moving theatrical
moment.
There was an emphasis on the words, stories,
and text in this production because of the simple and functional purpose of the
set. We could see a table, two chairs, some microphones, a laptop, and
recording equipment on the stage. The experimentation with sound and
pre-recorded text provided points in time that were atmospheric and thought provoking.
There was a point where lots of random songs were played on shuffle, which
nicely related back to the theme of unpredictability. Thorpe and Andrade's performance
style was intimate, almost casual, which suited the piece well and drew the
audience in. Although, this felt a little out of place in the big main theatre
space, and I think this show would have been more suitable for the upstairs studio.
This was a performance with a series of
narratives where events either ended up happening as planned or life went wide
off the mark. It was a piece of theatre which was unexpectedly varied because
it was dark-humoured, beautiful, surprising, sad, poetic, and sinister. Life really
is a fickle thing.
Reviewer - Sam Lowe
on - 11/6/18
You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find
ReplyDeletethis topic to be really something which I think I would never understand.
It seems too complicated and very broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post,
I'll try to get the hang of it!