TABAC ROUGE - SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2015
TABAC ROUGE - SYDNEY FESTIVAL, Sydney Theatre, 8 January 2015. Photography by Prudence Upton.
Anticipation - for one of the 2015 Festival’s big ticket items, for the return to Sydney of James Thiérrée and his imagination - was in the air at Sydney Theatre on Thursday evening. The theatre’s cavernous stage was made more so than usual by being both revealed and partially obscured by the numerous lighting rigs and bits of unknown paraphernalia occupying the dark void.
As we waited, a fluoro strip occasionally flickered here and there in the gloom - post-apocalyptic hope or the desultory final moments of a faulty appliance? Impossible to know and as the performance unfolded over 100 minutes the opposing possibilities became a motif: bring your own ideas, they are as valid as anyone else’s. And talking to other members of the audience afterwards it became clear that those ideas covered a wide spectrum of possibilities.
For me the show, in essence, is steampunk physical theatre with Thiérrée described in the program as being responsible for “choreodrama” which is a pleasingly succinct and accurate term. Dominating the company of eight dancer/acrobat/performers is a giant steel structure of scaffolding and ratty old mirror panels about 7m square, it swivels, is trundled about on wheels, reflecting life and art and finally deconstructing in mid-air in something approaching a coup de théâtre but too clumsy and obvious to be truly magical.
Meanwhile, wheels feature largely in the show as the dancers whiz about on their bellies - lying on skateboardy things - and the various pieces of eccentric furniture zoom about too. This is where the steampunk thought comes in as techno-mechanical detritus meets a Victorian partner’s desk or treadle sewing machine or plump plush armchair. And these illuminated through set-ups ranging from the soft glow of old fashioned Tiffany through harsh modern industrial as well as the incorporation of spotlighting and minutely timed plays of light from the over-arching rigs. (Set design by Thiérrée, lighting manager: Bastien Courthieu.)
The title of the show - tabac rouge - is a nod to the opium haze that might or might not emanate from the comically sound-enhanced lighting up of a pipe sequence early on in the piece (sound Thomas Delot). There is also a fair amount of dry ice too and that adds to the overall monotonal colour scheme of murky dark and sunless light - chalk white make up, palely vulnerable bare feet; chalky smears on black or charcoal outfits that look like the picturesque but scratchy serge stuff worn by inmates of Solzhenitsyn’s gulags (costumes: Victoria Thiérrée).
There are fragmentary narratives and sporadic characterisations but they are not the point; Thiérrée is the apparently ageing ringmaster but he is dominated by a quasi-military major domo. This fellow does a lot of finger-wagging and forbidding but nevertheless his sheet of orders is ripped to shreds by the cranky old man. In a welcome moment of wit and wonderment the paper is stitched back together on the Singer by a 19th century seamstress who also drags around the machine and her upholstered sewing chair on yet more wheels. There is also a lot of bad tempered screeching and yelling and ill-defined violence which, because there is no apparent reason, is merely unpleasant rather than intellectually stimulating or disturbing.
Although Tabac Rouge has been in existence and on the road for more than a year it still feels and looks like a work in progress. Visual and physical ideas are thrown in and as quickly discarded in a muddle of half-baked moments. If Thiérrée’s intention is to alienate and deny meaning and connection, he succeeds brilliantly.
Opening in Sydney on a day when the civilised world was reeling in shock and horror at the massacre of journalists and police by Islamist morons in Paris, it felt like crude emotional manipulation rather than a political gesture that the third - milked - curtain call was turned into a spontaneous and teary standing ovation as the performers held up “Je suis Charlie” placards.
People I spoke to afterwards enjoyed Tabac Rouge for a lot of different reasons, but it left me unmoved and disinterested.
