WATER
WATER, Filter/Lyric Hammersmith production at Sydney Theatre, 14-22 September 2012. Photos by Lisa Tomasetti - of the company.
The much-anticipated visit by one of the UK's hottest theatre companies makes me wish Filter could come here more often. Nosing through their back catalogue and reviews is a mouth-watering exercise - the website is comprehensive and fun to explore. But only recommended if you don't easily suffer stage envy.
Water is an ideas- and image-packed 90 minutes that acknowledges the influence of Robert Lepage and Complicite but also has a mind of its own. Directed by David Farr with music and sound engineering by Tim Phillips, set and costume design by Jon Bausor, video by Andi Watson and lighting by Jon Clark, the show is the sum of its technical creative parts. It's also an enthralling piece of storytelling; the opening night audience sat in rapt silence as the unusual and unexpected tales unfolded.
While water in all its political, physical, geophysical, historical and social meaning is the thread that links the stories, it is the humans that dominate - the polemic is lightly handled and fascinating. Did you know for instance that unlike other molecules, the water molecule is social, rather than anti-social? The show starts with a lecture on this topic and it's amusing and - unless you're an expert - illuminating in an entertaining way.
In a six-degrees-of-separation structure, Poppy Miller is a senior English public servant, tasked with negotiating a climate change agreement at the G8 summit in Vancouver. In the same hotel is a sad sack of a man (Ferdy Roberts) who's come for his father's funeral and to meet his half-brother (Oliver Dimsdale) for the first time. He has always idolised his absent father - a star academic in Canada - as a moral and idealistic hero. His younger brother, an FM talk show host disabuses him of this cosy fantasy. These two are not destined to become close.
The public servant has a boyfriend (Dimsdale again) to whom she's just given the flick; he's an extreme cave diver and in Mexico to attempt the world record for deep diving (1000m). Each discovers a date with destiny that neither could have predicted back home in London. Meanwhile, going back a couple of decades, the truth about the academic hero (Roberts again) is another life laid bare. All in all, these very ordinary human stories prove the idea that truth is not only stranger than fiction but also, in its everydayness, often much more interesting than anything a scriptwriter could dream up.
That's definitely the case with these stories. Where they go and how rivets the attention for the duration even as low- and hi-tech staging and effects dazzle; they could easily distract from less than fine acting and strong narrative. Time and place overlap as characters and their lives continually morph and re-assemble into something or somewhere else. The production uses the oldest and newest techniques, materials and technical possibilities and is intensely theatrical. The real is hyper-real and everything is on show: a drip of water into a bucket is Miller flicking her cheek with her finger as she stands in front of a microphone. Trans-continental phone calls are evident by the electronic FX conjured up by Tim Phillips from his bank of laptop, keyboards and other gadgetry. And so it goes.
Water is as exciting and enchanting for an Australian audience as the real thing. It's delightful, intelligent, hugely entertaining and is Highly Recommended.
