In order to celebrate World Theatre Day, 1927 Company decided to release a film of a live stage presentation of their award-winning and highly acclaimed production of Golem. The 90 minute play was screened simultaneously on various websites including 1927 Theatre's own, their Facebook page, HOME Theatre (Manchester), The Old Market (Brighton), The Jewish Museum (Berlin), La Libre (Belgium), Spoleto Festival (USA), and Theatre De La Ville (Paris).
The piece had its World Premiere performance at The Salzburger Stadtstheater during The Salzburg Festival in 2014, and was then filmed live and shown on BBC4 in 2018. It is that filming that is now being shown again and is available to watch on the above sites for the next fortnight.
Golem is a truly unique piece of theatre.Trying to describe what I have witnessed is perhaps impossible, the phrase 'it needs to be seen to be believed' is as apt here as it would be anywhere. In fact, after watching it as a film, I tend to think it might actually work better in this medium, although having never seen it live it is difficult to say. Certainly 1927's trademark style of using film, animation, projection, and having the actors oh so cleverly and seamlessly interact with them is omipresent and abundant. It is highly stylised - a kind of cross between Kurt Weill, Terry Gilliam and Marc Blitzstein's Federal Theater Project. It offers a truly dystopian vision of, or perhaps an alternate reality vision of, our very near future, but is wry and slightly mischievous about it all too.
The story concerns a certain Average-Joe named Robert, who lives at a time in our recent past where manpower was prized, money was hard to come by, and technology had not yet taken a foot-hold. Let's call it the 1930s. Robert works in a mundane factory, doing mundane repetitive and probably pointless work, walking the Party line, wearing the Party clothes and chanting the Party mantras. That is until one day he meets up with his friend, an inventor, who has invented a Golem. A Golem we are told, is a clay 'robot'. The Golem will do exactly what its master tells it to, and do it in half the time and with twice the efficiency. He sells his first Golem to Robert.
The play is a satire on both Communistic-based societies and Consumerism-based societies. Cleverly the play does not take sides over East v West or Capitalism, as it has rather stern warnings about both societal extremes within the play. Neither is the play overly political, but instead uses the politics to further the narrative. That is because the play is not actually a political play at all.. in fact it is about something else altogether.... technology, and our dependance on it.
The play also features live music and song played by a keyboardist and drummer on the sides of the stage, and they also make up the extra members of the Punk Progressive Rock Band they form to 'smash society'.
The lighting is some of the most creative and technically superb I have seen in a very long time and the whole was directed with fine attention to detail and a fastidiousness for absolute precision by the play's writer, Suzanne Andrade.
Without spoiling the story or the end, this play is perhaps a 'wake-up call' for us all to recognise that we are simply enslaved by our technology. How much control does our technology have over itself and indeed us? - and that is the question that ultimately we need to answer, and do we feel comfortable with that answer? Inspiration for this piece was taken from an old Jewish folk tale which tells of a man making a machine out of clay in order to serve him. The play does not follow the fable, but we can be certain that the two ends are not dissimilar. The large and clunky clay Golem is soon replaced by a more modern, smaller, zippier, more efficient Golem #2, which is, in turn replaced by an implant, the Golem #3. You can see where this is going.......
The play is an absolute feast for the senses, and the stop-motion and real-time animations which make up a very large part of the production, and are the creations of Paul Barritt, are simply stunning. As a production it feels both dated and contemporary at one and the same time (a deliberate ploy I feel); as if we are voyeurs watching the quotidien mundanity of the poor, downtrodden, unaspirational, who just by chance, happens to believe the dogma, the constant advertising and brainwashing, and then the rise to a new and better life. "Say 'yes' to progress!"
Full credit to the live actors / actresses too... Genevieve Dunne, Nathan Gregory, Philippa Hambly, Rowena Lennon and Felicity Sparks, with Ben Whitehead as the voice of Golem.
If you only ever get the chance to watch this production - and as I have already mentioned it is available for the next two weeks on several websites - then you absolutely MUST! If you get the chance to see it in a theatre - GO! [just as the advertising and the company behind Golem became 'Go'... GO.. everything!]
Extremely clever, extremely clever, extremely clever, say 'yes' to Golem, say 'yes' to Golem...........!
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 27/3/19
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