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10-2000 Review of: Sweet Dreams by Diane Esguerra staged by Sphinx Theatre Company and Some Explicit Polaroids by Mark Ravenhill staged by Out of Joint Sara Freeman University of Puget Sound, [email protected]

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Citation Freeman, Sara. "Review: Sweet Dreams, staged by Sphinx Theatre Company, and Some Explicit Polaroids, staged by Out of Joint." Theatre Journal 52.3 (October 2000): 401-403.

This Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Sound Ideas. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Sound Ideas. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Some Explicit Polaroids by Mark Ravenhill; Sweet Dreams by Diane Esguerra Review by: Sara Freeman Theatre Journal, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Oct., 2000), pp. 401-403 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press PERFORMANCEREVIEW / 401

was their physiques reinforced by their symmetri SOME EXPLICIT POLAROIDS. By Mark cal choreography, which rendered their shadows Ravenhill. Out of Joint, New Ambassador's in virtually identical and synchronized motion. Theatre, London. 26 October 1999. as While their bodies dangled flesh matter in end less minute contortions, their shadows emerged SWEET DREAMS. By Diane Esguerra. Sphinx a independently like pair of phantom amoebas, Theatre Company, Chelsea Arts Centre, Lon or contracting relaxing under the microscopic light. don. 28 October 1999.

as an The second act proceeded alien tango with in the ground, evoking images of earth-bound Supposedly, socialism and feminism have been sects. The duo, with their backs toward us, de discredited in late twentieth-century Britain. Be a tween recent scended into pool of red light. Keeping their faces the crop of "lad's plays" noted by canvases feminists alike averted and legs bent, their backs became critics and and the tendency of for muscular forms. They extended their spines current theatre practitioners to reject the techniques and lay prostrate, allowing their flesh to rub and of 1970s-era political theatre, feminism and social on were seem crawl the hard surface. They able to ism the least popular of stage subjects. Yet at a transform their anatomies to such degree that the end of the decade, Mark Ravenhill's Some their movements often appeared directionless?an Explicit Polaroids and Diane Esguerra's Sweet Dreams a optical illusion aided by their hairless and elon returned both issues to the stage with certain a was was gated bare bodies. From distance, it hard to millennial insistence. Sweet Dreams commis were or tell whether they bending forward back sioned and staged by Sphinx Theatre Company, on ward to walk all fours. While the duo adopted the 1990s incarnation of feminist theatre pioneer was symmetry to produce doubling between them, their the Women's Theatre Group. Polaroids pro a a kinetic art followed linear structure to create duced by Out of Joint under Max Stafford-Clark, flow of metamorphosis: their torsos and limbs whose direction of the seminal socialist theatre name mutated in progressive variations without cyclical company Joint Stock is heralded in the of his were new repetition. The couple's gestures both rhyth company. The provoking, passionate produc new mic and jerky, attenuated and proficient, volatile tions of these plays put socialist and feminist so on with a and rigorous, presenting configurations difficult issues back the boards savvy theatricality. and outlandish that they seldom looked human. Like so of feminist theatre before state constant many pieces it, Then, abruptly, they ended the of Sweet Dreams restages that crucible of feminist motion to become ossified specimens, like aliens Freud's failed treatment of Ida humans. critique: Sigmund poisoned by as Bauer, the girl he immortalized the hysteric case The music stopped as two men in plain clothes Dora in his study. In the post-show discussion I approached the pair. They moved Steger from the attended, Sphinx Artistic Director Sue Parrish was dry concrete to the shallow water about fifteen feet said she commissioned the text because she move water. as away. They returned to Sim to the fascinated by Dora and has always viewed her in someone Some audience members gasped disbelief; oth "a kind of female Hamlet: who has trouble ers ran quickly to the scene. Pushed by the two being heard, has trouble with the past, is haunted." on men, the frozen bodies started rolling slowly Unlike Helene Cixous's aggressively deconstructive own their toward deeper water. Before most spec Portrait of Dora, which dislocates language and was a tators registered what happening, the per multiplies characters into hysterical iteration of more formers dropped into the central current and their images and actions, Sweet Dreams creates were twin figures instantly carried away by the solid characters and sequences. In fact, Esguerra's rapids. A breathtaking exit closed the culminating starting point is the "real" person Ida Bauer, who is act to of THEM. often lost history in the fame of her alter-ego Dora. Nevertheless, still works MEILING CHENG Esguerra's play by fragments, because almost nothing is known about University of Southern California the real Ida except the records of her treatment, her and marriage, her death. Esguerra knows that case what makes the real Ida's powerful is pre cisely its unfinished nature. Her cocaine-sniffing can Freud barely believe that Dora/Ida rejects him and leaves his analysis incomplete. In perform ance, the doubling of the wickedly sharp actor as Freud Herr K Jonathan Oliver both and ampli fied on at this confusion the part of male figures the 402 / Performance Review

narra or female's refusal to participate in their male choice is slyly feminist: uninterested in radical or tives of love recovery. polemical stances, Parrish and her company pro a posed that perhaps Ida should not be symbol of At the center of the play, Esguerra's Dora/Ida, women's but of their power to set terms. a suffering, played by Sophie Walker with compelling and a self-centered charisma, remained inscrutable, Some Explicit Polaroids approached socialism much aware mystery who seemed of her historic/hys like Sweet Dreams approached feminism: from the a teric dimensions. At moments Walker created side, wary of sacrificing its theatrical effect to overt an a on a sincere child of Ida, girl the cusp of puberty political discussion. Yet Polaroids is play that a who had territory battles with her mother, ideal would be completely incomprehensible without ized her father, and expressed genuine relief when previous understanding of how Thatcherism Freud assured her that he in fact believed her story changed British assumptions about society and the about Herr K's attempted seduction. At other times, role of theatre in it. The play is Ravenhill's follow a Walker's Ida exhibited self-presence that de up to the violently successful , a a feated all attempts to explain her still-potent mys brutal play that follows group of drug-ravaged tery, as in one surreal scene where she turned the young Londoners trying to redeem their trashed tables and analyzed the images in Freud's dreams. humanity, the production of which established Out scene to as Sphinx's production used this highlight of Joint Britain's hottest touring company. Trash in the struggle between the real Ida and the words is again Ravenhill's leading metaphor Polaroids. Freud used to represent her. "Trash music, trash food, trash people" is the rallying cry. Benedict Nightingale calls the type of The staging of Sweet Dreams literally reflected theatre exemplified by Ravenhill, Jeb Butterworth, this play of representation. The main set piece of and the late ?whose plays Mojo and Annabel Lee's was a wall of horizontal design Blasted bear clear resemblance to Ravenhill's?the to rotating mirror panels, which spun reflect the "theatre of urban ennui." The whole genre reflects red and green carpet and furniture. The effect the confusion and exhaustion of a young genera the of the characters behind the reproduced images were was no tion who told there such thing as bodies of the as if the characters were actors, a "society," just group of individuals looking out in the recollections, dreams, and suspended projec for number one. In this world, both human kind tions out in Freud's office. In poured counterpoint, ness and socialism are the ridiculed dreams of an on a the stage left wall Munch-inspired line draw older defeated history. an woman generation manifestly by ing of emaciated whose eyes and lips were a woman in erased figured Ida-as-Dora, whose The difference Some Explicit Polaroids, how are corporeal perceptions and speech stymied by ever, is that at the center of Ravenhill's ensemble are her interaction with Freud. two people of that older generation, whose struggles in the current social and political land of the reinvested Ida with Sphinx's telling story are scape intertwined with the struggles of the her voice, which was both an artistic and political drugged and disillusioned younger characters. Nick move. The show with a of an old began tape and Helen are former "class warrior soul-mates," woman's voice "one hundred in a repeating years" a but the play begins when recently-released-from incantation that insisted the twentieth mystical on jail Nick shows up Helen's doorstep and discov has been defined and from century shaped begin a woman on ers suited, bespectacled the local to end Freud's theories. The voice then ning by an council who is nursing thoughts of becoming unfolded into Ida Bauer's introduction of herself, was a MP. Nick in jail for kidnapping and torturing the few scant facts known about her. presenting business owner who fired Helen's father. Helen with a Bringing things full circle, the play ended refuses to put Nick up, but they have unfinished voice-over that found significant parallels between business. One of the striking things about Raven the way Ida and Freud's lives ended: both prosper hill's dramaturgy is that he writes about groups of ous each left as a Jews, Germany refugee during as a people his protagonists instead of placing World War II. Displaced and isolated, both died single (male) character center stage, which is the from cancer. The voice-over set Sweet Dreams as up norm for a writer so embraced main was generally by a kind of recovered memory play, and it stream theatres and critics. Nick and Helen's story the staged with nostalgia and elegance. But intersects and overlaps with that of Nadia, Tim, on Ida's voice production's emphasis challenged a and Victor. Nadia is positive-thinking stripper the of her abuse at Freud's dogmatic assumption an with abusive boyfriend; Tim has AIDS and Ida had the last was hands. Sphinx's laugh?she a insists that nothing "means" anything; Victor is the one who left. She was Freud's match, not his Russian go-go dancer who wants to be "owned" by victim. The position Sphinx inhabited with this Tim. To complicate matters, Jonathan, Nick's vie PERFORMANCEREVIEW / 403

a seems tim, makes reappearance. Ironically, he to A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. By Will be the character of iam The only capable doing any larger Shakespeare. Chicago Shakespeare He uses excess to the good. his capitalist fund ater, Chicago, Illinois. 5 March 2000. building of schools, hospitals, and the occasional new "festival of plays." In 1986, Barbara Gaines founded the Shakespeare over In performance, Ravenhill's bitter humor and Repertory in Chicago, and the course of sev was a driving astonishment at the state of the nation eral years developed reputation for sound pro mirrored in the intense performances delivered by ductions. In October of 1999, the company changed as as name to as Nick Dunning Nick and Russell Barr Tim. As its the Chicago Shakespeare Theater it a on Nadia and Victor, Fritha Goodey and Matthew moved into new home Navy Pier, a $23 a Waite created terrifyingly smooth surfaces for char million complex housing 525-seat courtyard the acters atre on constitutionally incapable of confronting their modeled the Royal Shakespeare Company's a pain. Sally Rogers's Helen and David Sibley's Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and smaller, are Jonathan were the most textured portrayals, fasci 200-seat studio theatre. Both excellent spaces, or an nating because they rarely gave into the rage superbly designed. That Navy Pier is amusement some denial of the others. Julian McGowan's set pro park site may have effect on the productions a vided the most antiseptic of carpet-covered interi there, encouraging trend to popularization. ors for the action. The space worked best as the a native of Ireland and former room Joe Dowling, hospital where Victor and Tim have their director of Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre, has final, sordid rapprochement. That any comfortable been the artistic director of the Guthrie Theatre in or furnishings personal belongings only appeared since 1995. He has made a of on a screen Minneapolis specialty video backdrop underlined, like Johanna A Midsummer Night's Dream, and although I have Town's clinical lighting, the cool and technological not seen them all, I did see the isolation of modern life. Max Stafford-Clark's di touring production mounted The from in at a as if by Acting Company Juilliard rection kept the play moving furious pace, in 1991 and his Stratford Festival to was Dayton produc convince the audience that the play relent tion of 1993. In January of 2000 he opened his most hip in spite of its reconsideration of the need lessly a recent production of Shakespeare's comedy for for human connection and fair provision of social sold-out run in the season of the resources. As a whole, the inaugural Chicago unflinching production em Shakespeare Theater (CST). This production strove to make emotional and cultural degradation the elements of the a phasized magical play. the true profanity of play riddled with foul and fouler acts. Like the characters of the of language Despite popularity the CST Dream, critical Polaroids, Out of is a to talk about was Joint finding way response mixed. One Chicago reviewer the world without branded as ever a changing being doubted "that there has been happier, more relics of a era. or more past romantic hilarious staging" of the play, as a while another damned it "big, bloated bore." Some Explicit Polaroids is not as generous or Both are For all its a responses justified. strengths, subtle piece of work as Sweet Dreams; it trades the production's faults seemed to be the result of exertion and anger for sophistication and contem an unlimited It the two a of budget. emphasized campiness plation. But the plays engage discussion of the musical and on in scenes, perhaps overempha socialism and feminism stage unexpectedly sized the visual aspects, especially the ingenuity of hopeful and lucidly artistic ways, which is the the set. rightful heritage of two companies descended from WTG and Joint Stock. and Out of Joint are are Sphinx Darling's Dreams always sexy. The press to terms with the and for the coming past hoping release said the production was inspired by the future at the end of the century. paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, but if so, Bosch was SARA FREEMAN inspired by one of Georgia O'Keefe's vagina like flowers. For the forest scenes, a "fantastical University of Wisconsin-Madison motorized 18-foot-tall by 24-foot-wide electric blue flower" rolled out and disgorged the first fairy and to Puck rock and roll music. The production opened with an apparently naked Puck romping through was the audience until he summoned onstage and dressed. Oberon was feathered and shelled, like a a turtle, with big codpiece. The four young lovers were reduced to their underwear (their outer gar ments flew off them magically) within minutes of