Adelaide Festival. FC Bergman / Toneelhuis. Dunstan Playhouse. 16 Mar 2023
Branded as a contemporary fable based on old Flemish tales, The Sheep Song is, firstly, visually stunning. It is dance theatre, more dance and movement based than theatre; there is no dialogue and the expressive form of the actors (performers) is therefore entirely reliant upon a mood and visual cues.
A naked man in a red cowl rings a cast bronze bell, thrice, a curtain is raised. A herd of sheep are grazing onstage, occasionally raising their heads to observe the audience, who are transfixed by fifteen live sheep on stage. One of those sheep is not like the others, it appears curious, lifting itself above the others to regard the humans, to experiment with standing, and walking, and to boldly go where no sheep has gone before.
The Sheep Song thus reveals itself as a parable of sorts, a comment upon the futility of the human condition. To the sheep it appears the human form is alluring, to us in the audience is revealed the notion of a sheeplike existence. Through a series of vignettes the sheep tries to be accepted into human society; the initial walking routine is beautifully powerful due to its simplicity. When the humans and the sheep synchronise their steps the audience have an unmistakable representation. A ‘road to Damascus’ scene has the sheep attacked by three men and left lying in the road, and there is a pantomime doll who masturbates and ejaculates blood. This latter, apparently, represents a Faustian pact made by the sheep to become ‘human’ but seems to represent more nearly the male fascination with their penis.
This is a performance which draws darkness around itself as a protective cape. There is no joy in the notion of an animal ‘raising’ itself (in the manner of the pigs in Animal Farm); one might almost describe it as bleak. The stage is most often shrouded in haze, which billows in the perpetual half-light. Gradually, the sheep (Jonas Vermeulen) assumes those aspects which make them more and more human. The woman and a live dog make an appearance. The Sheep is attracted to her, begins wearing a coat, and loses the obvious hoofs. We may leave aside the obvious implausibility of a sheep (the female of the species) breeding with a blind woman and accept this may be history’s second recorded Immaculate Conception, and they have a child, who does not survive long.
Several times through the performance the sheep is presented with a banjo, and it becomes apparent that the inability to play it is a measure of just how ‘human’ the sheep is becoming. When the disfigured sheep is finally in a position to play the instrument, the tune shows that despite best endeavours, assimilation is impossible. The ability to play a baa chord, it must be assumed, is too great a requirement. In the final scene the sheep returns to the fold (and the flock return to the stage). Beautifully managed, the sheep are at first skittish around their former companion. Truly, the sheep does not easily fit into either world.
This is a performance rich in symbolism, and rich in imagery, but it is the music score of Frederik Leroux-Roels which brings the performance together. The simple banjo based intonation, augmented by looped recordings and reverb pedals and some simple programmable samples for the industrial and syncopated rhythms occasionally used make this a piece to savour. It is so simple, and so simply realised with the musician onstage through the majority of the performance. Powerful, evocative, and at time confronting, The Sheep Song is like no other performance piece.
Alex Wheaton
When: 16 to 19 Mar
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
