Saturday 3 November 2018

REVIEW: Often Onstage - HOME, Manchester.



'Houston, we have no problem here!'. Home’s Orbit Festival has almost completed its successful mission and is about to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, as the festival goes into the last couple of days.
Landing on Home’s studio stage are the theatre company, Figs In Wigs with their show, Often Onstage. As the title suggests, they are often on stage but how did they get there, why are they there, and how do they leave?

The audience touchdown into a theatrical world of crazy costumes (as designed by Rachel Gammon, Jacques Vert, and Frank Usher) and time travelling. Journeying to the time of Shakespeare (bowing to the Bard himself) to the present moment and to the era of the Backstreet Boys. It is a “larger than life” look at theatre as an art-form. The all-women cast explore a myriad of ways to enter and exit the stage through the medium of dance. Highlighting the anxieties around making choices in life.
Often Onstage indulges in the ludicrousness of theatrical traditions and conventions, breaking the rules in the process. This contemporary performance asked what if your only form of motivation (whether you’re a performer or not) comes from inspirational quotes. Why is it compulsory for a company to adhere to particular conventions and rules in order to receive arts funding from “men in suits”? Why can’t they do just whatever they want, however silly or bonkers? This production accentuates its own production elements to deconstruct what is theatre and why people engage or take part in it?

Hilariously, the show began at the end. There was a prolonged curtain call, despite the cast not having done anything yet to deserve it. It was quite strange that the cast bowed to the walls on either side, they only needed to bow to us. Automatically, there was the idea of why do people want to become performers? Do performers live for the applause and for someone to love them, because they don’t love themselves? Why does the tradition of bowing exist in the first place? You don’t see Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, or Business Persons, for example bowing to other people and receiving their earned round of applause. Is theatre for entertainment, or is it a tool for change, education, and empathy?

Two scenes presented the cast and creatives setting up and dismantling the stage, with the house lights up and the audience completely forgotten about. These scenes were both comical and insightful. It was a reminder of all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes which the audience don’t usually see. Laughably, you had the vocal warm ups, the stage manager did everything and was constantly running around. I loved how they opened up the back of the studio theatre.

Both “behind the scenes” scenes were totally naturalistic. I have no idea whether they genuinely were sorting stuff out as and when, or it was all planned and written, or maybe it was a combination of both. Whichever way, the organised chaos was very well directed. Then, the notion of pre-show rituals was exposed: amusingly they kept telling each other to, “Break a Fig!”

There was a hyper-theatricality to the dance scenes, with flashing bright lights and massive quantities of stage smoke pumped out into the auditorium. In one dance moment, the cast wore a costume which I think attempted to light up their wombs. I’m not sure what this was trying to symbolise. I liked the wigs, signifying uniformity and fame versus privacy - kind of like the wigs Sia, the pop singer, would wear.

The company foregrounded, in their unique theatrical world, the changeable nature of performance: switching from representational to presentational at any given moment. Creating the illusion of being transported somewhere else and then shattering that illusion of performance until you became self-conscious of your role as an audience member. Do we clap now? Do we laugh now? Do we listen now? Do we leave now? Often Onstage is smart, playful, effectively inconsistent, and hilarious. “Break a Fig” for the future, Figs in Wigs.

Reviewer – Sam Lowe
On – 2/11/18





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