[기사] Draw up a chair for some brilliant wooden acting - 영국 해럴드

[수키님]

Draw up a chair for some brilliant wooden acting

 

WOYZECK: A fascinating adventure

Woyzeck
Star rating:*****

Score
Star rating:****

Lacrimosa
Star rating:***

Victoria
Star rating:*****

All performances at Assembly Aurora Nova

Woyzeck. On paper it seems an unlikely way to start any Fringe day. Georg Buchner's play about a wretched, put-upon soldier is such a thing of haunted shadows and blighting despair that to have it kick in at 10.30am seems like turning the day upside-down. Hold on - it's in Korean, too. Foreign-language dramas before elevenses? Madness, surely.

Madness to miss it, more like. Whether you know the original play or not, this is quite simply a fascinating adventure in physical theatre - and a welcome glimpse of something other than the martial-arts-with-machetes spectaculars that we've seen, and certainly relished, from Korea in recent years. That said, there is a strand of acrobatic skill and rogueish clowning in this production by the Sadari Movement Laboratory (SML), but - like the undertow of Astor Piazzola's tango music - it serves to accentuate the lack of tolerable normalities in Woyzeck's existence. Which brings me to the chairs In the meticulously precise hands of the SML cast, chairs are only occasionally used for sitting. The opening emblematic moments, when Woyzeck's own chair fragments into pieces and - like his life - will not come together, hardly prepare you for the way in which director Do-Wan Im and the actors conjure up not just physical contexts but atmospheres and inner states with these simple wooden chairs.

On a bare stage, the chairs perform like a shape-shifting jigsaw: a temple tower one moment, the next a coffin-ing cage for Woyzeck. But when twirling and spinning at speed, with the actors vocalising in arias of screeching and taunting, the chairs speak of emotions in turmoil and of a world so out of kilter for Woyzeck that - even without the expressive body language of Jae-Won Kwon - there's no mistaking his tormented spiral into murderous anguish. As for his mistress Marie's encounter with the lascivious Sergeant-Major - well, who would have thought that two chairs, back-to-back, could suggest such lust? Add in the sensual, sinuous movement of Eun-Young Joing's Marie and it's a wonder the wood doesn't spontaneously combust in impassioned flames.

Snippets of English surtitles keep audiences in the narrative loop, but this isn't a slavishly literal rendition of Buchner's text - rather it's an inspired, visually stunning evocation of his themes. A brilliant, energising start to any day, let alone one spent in the cultural oasis of Aurora Nova.

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Score sees the award-winning French company Au Cul du Loup return after an absence of five years with a further instalment of seriously clever musical whimsy. This time, their soundscapes have a sporting note - but not necessarily the ones you might expect. Instead of the thwack of tennis balls across a court, there's an angry buzzing - like bees looking for the honey of victory - as lyre-rackets whizz through the air. However, in a spirit of accuracy, the servers do grunt.

As before, with Mousson, this new piece never settles into predictability. Just when you think they're playing for laughs - fooling around as uppity horsemen, while convincingly clicka-clacking a cunning alternative to coconut shells, for instance - they opt for a moment of such inventive magic, transforming everyday materials into a musical resource, that you grin in sheer amazement. The skis that are giant swanee-whistles, peep-peeping and hooting out rivalry. The wrestlers, covered in sticky tape - each contact is a rippingly hilarious one - or encased in paper, where to crumple your opponent's sash is a cue for messy scrapping. Wires that sing, singers who rap, wrapping material that becomes part of a delightful mosaic of movement and sound Score is a typically clever title for a piece where the goal is composing music on the hoof.

Music is the very heart, pulse and soul of what Song of the Goat Theatre (Poland) offer up on-stage. That, and a stylised movement vocabulary which, in Lacrimosa, looks as if it has stepped out of early Christian artworks. (In fact, the company has sourced the ecstatic poses from the ancient Greek cult of Anestenaria, or firewalkers.) What fuels this particular outpouring of intense singing, striding and swirling of draperies is the religious fanaticism that, in 1485, occasioned a pogrom in the French town of Arras. A plague has led to appalling crimes, some-one must atone - and the local bishop settles on young women and especially Jews as the culprits who should be sacrificed. The gist of this, if not the precise details, certainly rises to the surface of Lacrimosa. And as ever, the stage pictures have memorable power - hands thrusting upwards to heaven; bodies surrendering to the blind force of terror, grief or, indeed, religious fervour, so that they move with febrile speed. And the singing - fragments of Mozart, sonorous visceral chantings, morsels of requiem masses - is almost unnerving in its beauty. But (and, alackaday, the comparison with the award-winning Chronicles - A Lamentation can't really be avoided) Lacrimosa doesn't twist in the guts or squeeze the heart in the way one might hope or expect. First-time audiences, however, may not feel the lack. And Lacrimosa is still a Fringe wildcard that's worth putting on your list.

Victoria - a little like Woyzeck, perhaps - delves into those aspects of life that folk often say they go to the theatre to escape from. It's a false economy. Believe me, this bravura foray into an old age beset with Alzheimer's and incontinence is like a hug that whispers "courage". And while it doesn't dodge the inevitable conclusions, it flies a hugely uplifting flag for life, for dreams and for caring. Our first sight of Victoria, she's in a wheelchair. Small, wiry, indeterminately old. Grey hair, rebelliously curly. A hospital gown that's prone to expose her knickers. A beady stare that nonetheless seems to go in and out of focus, depending on what's connecting - or not - inside her brain-pan. She's garrulous, though she denies it as she greets us. Dulcinea Langfelder doesn't so much play her as inhabit her. More than that, she makes you connect with Victoria. Any initial reservations about hearing her wandering through half-bit memories - come on, you know you'd probably move seats if you sat beside her on a bus - evaporate as she morphs into the Victoria she once was, or yearned to be. As the various screens that fill the stage swish round and about, like lifting veils of recollections, Victoria's wheelchair becomes a partner in a balletic/ acrobatic dance that is daring, exquisite. She'll subsequently tap dance in the shoes she's stolen from her orderly/carer (Eric Gingras), whose chivvying and briskness mask a genuine affection and solicitous concern for this lonely old moppet.

She's dying, of course. The shadow-selves on the screens gain in presence. Victoria has mini-strokes - very deftly suggested - and, despite Gingras's efforts to keep her engaged with the dance of life, she passes But not before she's made us laugh out loud at the indignities of old age (and even louder at her valiant, resilient urge to suck every last drop of juice out of life) and made us choke back tears, either because we've known and lost our own Victorias, or because we see ourselves moving ever closer to her point of departure. I hope I hear my old cats purring to me, too. In the mean time, a bouquet of heartfelt superlatives to Ms Langfelder.

[복숭아 얼굴]

영어의 압박 ㅠ_ㅠ

[주리]

뭐하자는거야? 해석 안 올리면 때려버린다~

[주훈]

그냥 블라블라.....이렇게 써있네..캬캬캬캬............................얼 재원아저씨 이름도 나왔네 영자신문에..ㅎㅎ

[주훈]

아 근데 재원아저씨 연기 좋게 평가받았네...흠 배나와도 에딘버러에서 통하나보당..ㅎㅎ

[미경]

오호..주훈옵..해석좀...ㅋㅋ

[노넴]

흡... 압박