What can I say about this performance? You came out of Home’s studio completely dazed and bewildered like you’ve just come out of a hypnotic trance. Sleepwalk Collective’s style of experimental performance incorporates live art and results in a theatrical cosmos that is fragile, fragmented, and dreamy. Therefore, some golden nuggets of the performance stick out like a sore thumb, other parts fly over your head. That’s by no means a bad thing at all. I guess my review will somewhat mirror this unique experience of having the pleasure of watching it.
Kourtney Kardashian was an opera, well kind of. There was no live singing. Technology was on the brink of replacing humans and both actresses had speakers attached to them - playing the music and voices of the past. The performers were Iara Solano Arana and Nhung Dang. They effectively lured the audience in with their beautiful zephyr-like and soporific delivery of text. Outstandingly written by the cast along with Sammy Metcalfe and Rebecca Matellản. Witty in parts as well.
This contemporary piece of theatre was layered with a multitude of ideas, like disseminated motifs in a classical symphony score. Script, acting, movement, lights, music, and costume were orchestrated to spellbinding effect. It played around with the rules and conventions of classical opera. Each scene giving a title from an operatic glossary of terms such as: Cavatina, Cadenza, and Canzonetta – reflecting the nature of those sections of music.
It simultaneously loved and loathed contemptable luxury and artistic virtuosity. Personally, I loved the numerous nods to their previous works prior to this: Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian. Metcalfe’s music had a real window to shine here and it did. Playing with the elements of music with variation in dynamics (crescendo and decrescendo) and contrast in texturing. It had the power to elicit intense emotions. The hairs stood on the back of your neck.
The text possesses an extraordinary ability to send you off into dream-like limbo but instantly pulls you back to reality with its underlying passionate and political pleas. Here we are in the theatre, we may not be as affluent as the upper-class patrons of the past, but meanwhile there are homeless people on the streets or migrants trying to cross the English Channel. I remember it examined representational performance in a presentational manner. The audiences of the past and today, when watching a conventional play, know that the actors are pretending and they know that they know they are pretending, yet the experience is still real because it is felt.
A choir of memories and events played out before our very eyes and we became lost in the depth of the plot. Sometimes you didn’t realise what was going on or why we were here. Though, eventually we were guided back to the notes on the show’s musical stave, as words created pictures and led us to what we desperately needed to hear. The static quality of the performance made for a gorgeous contrast to the frenetic character of the music and large quantity of text and ideas conveyed.
This is the kind of performance which takes a while to process after watching it, but it’s this that leaves you thirsty for more. What’s next? Exploring the Jenner Family? Who knows, but they are at the top of their game.
Reviewer - Sam Lowe
on - 7/3/19
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