Translunar Paradise

Venue: Latitude Festival, Henham Park, Suffolk

Company: Theatre Ad Infinitum

Director: George Mann

This review first appeared on the Whatsonstage.com website

Deborah Pugh, George Mann & Kim Heron

Translunar Paradise doesn't have words - it doesn't need them. Theatre Ad Infinitum's artistic director George Mann sums it up: “Its strength is in the absence of words. Places, actions, images, moments of memories, really evoke a dialogue but with the body and movements”. 

Indeed, Translunar Paradise (the title is borrowed from a W B Yeats poem) is a beautifully crafted exploration of grief that tugs at the heartstrings and yet succeeds in being joyous and inspiring at the same time. 

Mann, who co-wrote and also directs and performs, sweeps across the stage with fellow performer Deborah Pugh with the fluidity of a fine ballet as we watch William and his wife meet, court, marry, fight, grow old and die. It's a life-cycle that only the hardest of hearts would fail to be moved by.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspect of Translunar Paradise is that the older characterisations are immediate at the moment that the masks are donned and physicality adjusted. 

Joining the duo is Kim Heron, who manages to create an entire evocative soundtrack to the piece with accordion and wordless vocal. As William's wife passes away, her last rattling breath is produced by Heron and her instrument; a ticking clock produced with a fingernail and varnished case. Of course, creating such fine detail isn't an easy task in a tent in the middle of a field. 

Mann is pragmatic: “Normally in a theatre space you're able to encapsulate the piece allowing the audience to focus on it”, he said before the show and continued: “We've mic-ed up the accordion and so the music will be very clear; as it's a silent piece, there's no need to hear the dialogue”. 

And he's correct. Features covered by latex masks as the elderly couple and bare-faced as their younger selves, Mann and Pugh are nothing short of exquisite in their warts-and-all, poignant portrayal of a life-long love affair. A masterclass in theatricality.

PAUL COUCH

Woyzeck

Company: New Wolsey Young Company

Venue: New Wolsey Theatre Studio:

Liam Cadzow–Webb in Woyzeck

When Georg Büchner died at the early age of 23 in 1837 it looked as though his half-finished play about a young German soldier would die with him. However, a succession of writers took pen in hand and completed the work, which is brought to the New Wolsey Studio by the theatre’s Young Company.

Woyzeck is very much an ensemble piece but Liam Cadzow–Webb excels as the eponymous protagonist, a young man – the subject of medical experimentation and military abuse – who kills his lover in a crime passionnel when Woyzeck finds that she’s been playing around with one of his superior officers.

Despite keeping a very much lighter hand on the tiller than in recent productions, director Rob Salmon has managed to extract from his young cast a powerful and evocative piece of theatre that will go a long way to securing the Wolsey Young Company’s place as one of the region’s commanding youth groups.

There were some lighting issues on the opening night and the fundamental skill of finding one’s light seems to have evaded one or two members of the cast. The final flying scene doesn’t really work in such a confined space and would have been far more effective had it been a simpler execution.

However, these flaws do not detract in any way from the overall impact of the piece, especially the opening scene, a Swiss chalet clock nightmare vision that erupts from the simple wooden set. While the sexual imagery and language might shock, this content is justified in context and a far shout from some of the less relevant youth theatre we’re used to in the East Anglian region.

Highly recommended.

PAUL COUCH

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