STOCKHOLM
Stockholm Frantic Assembly and Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1. March 17-24 April 2010. Photography: Brett Boardman.
THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME, in the context of the latest production in Wharf 1, is one of two things: a knowing nod at trendoids who worship all things Scandinavian – from Bergman to Smeg appliances – and the psychological state where a prisoner or hostage becomes emotionally involved with the captor and vice versa.
Socratis Otto and Leanna Walsman are Todd and Kali, the vice versas who are living the dream spun by so many inner-city real estate agents of “edgy living”. This involves a degree of chic self-consciousness in everyday life that makes Madonna’s Vogueing phase look slovenly by comparison. In their modish apartment of hard surfaces and sculptural furniture (no lounging or couch potato behaviour permitted) the two pose for and with each other and – importantly – for themselves. They have metaphoric mirrors in their eyes from which they can admire their own beauty while seemingly engaging the world about them. Their narcissism is disconcerting in its plausiblity and authenticity. Any fashionable bar, restaurant or apartment block in this city overflows with such people. Increasing numbers of them frequent the newly au courant STC premises, these days, which is also disconcerting: what happens when the trend rats inevitably desert the ship for the thrill of the new?
British playwright Bryony Lavery has been observing such questions and the human foibles and frailty that accompany them for many years. In Kali and Todd she has created a couple of characters whose interiors are as artfully designed as the world they inhabit, so that when they inevitably stumble on the reality of human relations, their consequent downfall is an outcome much more disturbing than it would be if it were more obviously portrayed.
Stockholm is a co-work with Frantic Assembly, aka director/choreographers Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett. These physical theatre adventurers (who choreographed Black Watch, the Scottish tour de force that blew away Sydney Festival audiences in 2008) are the award-winning collaborators with the STC in one of the latter’s increasingly frequent leaps into unknown territory; this time giving over a precious production slot and two of our more precious actors to their own restaging of a work that’s collected rave reviews in the UK.
The structure of the play is a figure of eight: Kali and Todd inhabit the centre and in their minds and the artless constructs of their lives together they weave a circular course back in time and forward into the future; always returning to the centre via occasional direct communication with the audience – or their inner audiences, whichever are most receptive to the story of the moment. It’s an effective and gripping device that enables the viewer to glimpse the past and future while being enthralled by the present.
The present is particularly interesting because it’s enacted in a series of tightly disciplined, sometimes funny, sometimes erotic and sometimes macabre dance sequences. This is one hell of an ask for the two actors, neither of whom is a dancer nor have they shown any inclination to go the So You Think You Can Dance route. That they mostly pull off the acrobatic, Fred’n’Ginger routines with conviction and grace is a tribute to the months of training they’ve apparently put in.
The heightened physical movement of the action firstly highlights their physical beauty and vivid pleasure in one another; then, their increasingly destructive emotional co-dependence and inexorable descent into violence. And such is the depth of their immersion in the outward design of their lives, even that is wryly choreographed and stylised. It’s an idea that is extremely effective over the play’s 75 minutes and is carried off by the two on stage with often heart-stopping and stomach-churning conviction.
The production abounds with uncomfortably amusing textual, emotional and visual contradictions. In one gorgeously realised scene, Kali and Todd demonstrate, almost as fantasy, the odd preoccupation we have with the edible nature of a loved one (“I could eat you, honey/sugar/sweetie/cupcake etc”) when a dance sequence involves flatware and the sensual act of eating one another. Then again, the tender playing of a scene where they cuddle each other in bed, like babes in the wood, is fiercely in conflict with the setting of the bed as an almost vertical plane high above the stage. As mentioned elsewhere, being a vertigo sufferer, it made me feel as nauseous as a two-toed sloth in a high wind, such was the power of the visual and emotional clash. This is not a criticism, however, Stockholm and its two gutsy and totally committed actors is entertaining in the extreme.
The whole is at once minimal and luscious in its truthful depiction of the delicious and awful aspects of flawed “love”; and even more flawed yet touchingly recognisable human beings, for whom style is the only substance.
