THEATRE REVIEW: Double Bill: Skin Hunger / 2020 On Mount Olympus - Z-Arts Theatre, Manchester (online).

2020 really has been and continues to be our Annus Horribilis - especially in the entertainment and performance arts industry. The third year students of the Theatre And Performance degree course at Manchester's Arden Theatre School were due to perform their double bill of devised pieces live at the Z-Arts Centre, and then a second lockdown was declared and their plans, as well as many others' had to be quaffed. Seemingly undeterred however, the students still performed their pieces on the stage, but instead of a live audience, they were recorded and streamed live online. What would the world have done without computers I wonder?

Both pieces were about 40 minutes' long and there was an interval between, and perhaps unsurprisingly, both pieces managed to reflect either directly or indirectly the current times with allegory, theme, and action. One piece even saw a fully PPE-ed cleaner disinfecting the equipment and advising on social distancing requirements etc as part of the production. It was sardonic humour at best, and although we found it funny, it is also a huge indictment of and to our contemporary situation

Of course both pieces were THEATRE pieces and were never meant to be shown on film; and as such you do lose much of the atmosphere, the effects, and indeed the sound and visual quality too. It would therefore be unfair of me to review these pieces in those regards. In fact, as a fellow reviewer pointed out to me only a few days ago, in these times, it is a small miracle that any theatre in any form is happening at all, and we should simply celebrate that in its own right.  

Skin Hunger, devised in collaboration with Tmesis Theatre, took our contemporaneous inability to touch and socialise to a new level; creating a post-modern society where touching was outlawed. The stage was split into 9 equal squares with a performer "imprisoned" in each of them, and as the piece progressed they became increasingly more and more frustrated at their inability to effectively communicate or relate to each other if they were unable to physically connect with each other. Love, understanding, friendship, empathy, all rely largely on touch. 

Using a large screen to the rear of the stage with video montages and voice-overs, this was a mostly non-verbal piece which relied on body language, mime, movement, dance and physical theatre. These elements were delivered with precision and it was visually stunning. 

Here a world was created where leaving your allocated square at any time required the use of a face mask and keeping away from anyone else, a place where breathing was sometimes difficult, and a place where unseen overlords shout dictates and commands through speakers making policy which doesn't make sense. Any of this sound familiar?

With excellent lighting and good choice of music this was a contemporary performance piece for and of our times.

In contrast, but also excellently complimenting this, was the second piece, 2020: On Mount Olympus, which was devised in collaboration with 70/30 Split Theatre.

This piece was more comedic, and relied more too on dialogue. Parallels were easy to draw between this and Skin Hunger, as well as our COVID life. Here though we were taken to the top of Mount Olympus to meet the 10 (not 12) Gods and Godesses who still remain there. We watched their mundane quotidian exercise routines, and we saw that even though they need to keep up appearances of being deities, they are bored and lack any motivation since the world no longer has any need for them.

It is at this point that the cleaning lady enters with COVID-secure PPE and sanitises everything, eventually changing and motivating the deities into action. [her voice sadly was too muffled at times to understand... a combination of mask and live audio transmission]. A TV cookery programme, an online fitness programme, a blog on making banana bread......... but how will it all end?

I enjoyed the use of mystical mood music and haze at the start which dissipated and more contemporary music used later, and there was an excellent use of the stage space in this piece too making some perhaps unintentionally interesting shapes due to camera angle.

To iterate, under the current circumstances, these pieces were absolutely excellent. The students had embraced their tasks wholeheartedly and jumped straight in at the deep end. There was a rawness and an energy in both of these pieces, which shone through on the video, which I rarely experience live, and that in itself speaks volumes!

Reviewer  - Matthew Dougall

on - 5/11/20