1927, Salzburg Festival, Theatre de la Ville Paris and Young Vic. Festival Centre - Dunstan Playhouse. 8 Mar 2016
Why is this innovative London-based theatre company, formed in 2005 and dedicated to produce works combining performance, live music and animation, named 1927? Could it have something to do with a breakthrough in motion picture technology, because in that year, the world's first talkie feature film was screened to the world - The Jazz Singer.
For you goys out there, a golem is a mythical (at least I hope it's mythical) Yiddish creature comprised of the earth - say clay - sometimes unable to speak, yet anthropomorphic enough to do the bidding of its owner. In this uncannily creative and busy multimedia production, a golem is a sort of Trojan horse for a mysterious amalgamation of commercial and media interests with designs on your shopping choices and life style. You may have a golem near you right now - in real life it's known as a mobile phone.
The co-ordination between the live (at least I hope they were alive) actors, the animated figures and backdrop movements, chiaroscuro lighting, sound effects and live music was absolute magic. Suzanne Andrade (writer and director) and Paul Barritt (animation and design) seem to employ the cartoon styles of the early animation successes, like Sullivan and Messmer's silent screen star, Felix The Cat, which was followed by Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie in 1928, in keeping with 1927's thematic imperatives. Mickey and Minnie Mouse made history as Disney was dedicated to making the first fully synchronised sound cartoon.
There were several other reflections of style. Some of the highly stylised motions of the characters made me think of Woody Allen in 1973's The Sleeper. And Golem's uniform and an image near the end of the show were eerily familiar to costumes designed by Kazimir Malevich for the Russian futurist opera, Victory Over The Sun, in 1913. Industrial design, useless workshop labour and a sense of insignificance harks back to the German expressionistic and epic science fiction film, Metropolis, made in, guess what year? 1927.
All this great stuff is brought to bear through a painstaking and lengthy workshop process to bring you a fresh fable of a contemporary danger to all of us. The five characters of the Binary Backup Dept are dressed in prints of 1s and 0s. Every detail is thematic. Actors Esme Appleton, Lillian Henley, Rose Robinson, Shamira Turner and Will Close somehow exquisitely balance humanoid quaint and quirky movement and modulated voices with their character's humanity and a yearning for dignity as they are subsumed by the machine. They could be any one of us. Furtively, Lillian Henley and Will Close leave the set to play keyboard and percussion respectively on stage, and then return to the action.
In this Australian premiere season, Golem, no doubt, is a highlight of the 2016 Adelaide Festival. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 8 to 13 Mar
Where: Festival Centre - Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
