#suchstuff

Review of ‘Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On’ by Sedos, April 2016

(I’m going to try to keep this review spoiler-lite; although the run has now finished with no possibility of an extension, I’m hoping the overwhelmingly positive critical reaction and the fact that it sold out every night will encourage a revival one day)

Punchdrunk are masters of their craft. They have set the bar almost impossibly high for immersive theatre and have ascended to levels other companies barely even try to reach. They have done so on the basis of enormous talent in their creative departments, and the generous funding of grant-making bodies and private/corporate backers. To recreate shows which so compellingly conjure up magical worlds would require a similar level of professional and financial resource. Right?

Wrong. An amateur dramatic society, with a fraction of the budget of Punchdrunk, have just succeeded in mounting a production with every bit of wonder and thrill as generated by The Drowned Man and Sleep No More. Sedos’ adaptation of The Tempest transformed one floor of an incongruously modern office block in London Docklands into an altered reality: part Elizabethan street, part fairytale forest, part far-off beach. Using the Punchdrunk immersive template - wander at will, follow characters, convey the narrative chiefly through movement and dance - Sedos fed the habit of those of us in the UK who have been having to go cold turkey since Temple Studios closed its doors nearly two years ago.

With Punchdrunk the model to which this production clearly aspired, the set design was of course complex, beautiful, almost excessive in its detail and hugely inventive (the programme notes reveal that this was Sedos’ most ambitious project ever in design terms). A beach with real sand. A potion room thick with bottles of suspicious ingredients. A mock-Tudor study in which the Bard himself dipped quill into inkpot and wrote with authentic-looking script on sheets of crumpled paper. A forest with, admittedly, only one tree but somehow the same sense of sylvan isolation and enchantment. The audience were, in true PD tradition, encouraged to rummage and discover details for themselves.

One doesn’t expect much from performances from an amateur production, but my expectations were comfortably exceeded. Dialogue was sporadic (and occasionally inaudible) but the movement and dance, while not attaining the jaw-dropping athleticism of PD (these people have day jobs, after all), still managed the same level of poetry and still conveyed the narrative most effectively. I noticed a marked improvement in commitment from the performers between the preview (my first show) and the last night (my last); you’d expect this with any production, but these people raised their game so much that we engaged with them just as deeply as we would have engaged with Lila, Boy Witch, Romola, Danvers or the Fool.

(Artwork by @arfman)

The soundtrack, again keeping with PD tradition, accompanied us in every space, mixing drones, Tudor motets, film scores, atonal chamber music and at one point a classic seventies disco hit. Voice-overs frequently quoted from the play, and always in keeping with the scene playing, but were superfluous except in terms of adding atmosphere. Where the directors might have chosen to use the text to explain the action in a scene, they instead decided to hang back, to allow the scene to speak for itself. While this frequently resulted in confusion (I had to have the different characters explained to me fully after the show by one of the cast), it meant that we were never spoonfed and that was so much more rewarding.

The production was so compelling it seems churlish to offer any criticism, and one must always keep the company’s amateur roots in mind. Lighting was occasionally misplaced, resulting in key moments taking place in shadow (still not as bad as SNM, though). One or two of the cast looked less assured, less grounded than the others. Arguably there were small patches in the design where it was too easy to look out at the real world, either the sterile concrete of Docklands office blocks or the brightly lit, shining corridors of Capstan House. But to dwell too much on these very minor points would be to undermine the colossal achievement of this production.

What impressed me so much about this production is the huge amount of thought which had gone into the layers of narrative, not merely hacking out another Shakespeare-in-a-funny-setting which has become standard fare among amateur and fringe productions. Characters were split, merged or absent altogether. The figures of Shakespeare and his queen, Elizabeth, featured prominently. This sometimes created confusion, as noted above, but it also created new layers of meaning, making this as much a rethinking of Shakespeare as a restaging.

It would have been so, so easy to do this badly. Directors @badlydrawndrownedman and @priceyc could simply have chosen to attempt to clone SNM and TDM, to shove masks on the audience (no masks in this production) and set them free to wander darkened, drone-filled corridors with strange figures hopping in and out of view to no obvious purpose. They could easily have pleaded shortcomings in time, budget, imagination or just willpower. Instead, they went the other way - they exceeded their limitations in every department. I am in awe of their achievement.

Is a revival too much to hope for? I have friends among the cast who say they would happily make space in their diaries for another run. Twelve performances seems too few for such a momentous experience. Or is it better to obey the old showbiz maxim: always leave them wanting more?

Another Diary of a Show

More gorgeous Such Stuff cast. Three test runs down, and we’re on in two days. There are no more rehearsals. This is it now. Still plenty more work to do on the set, soundtrack and lighting, but now it’s about the final details – making the space somewhere to explore as well as somewhere to watch a play. And also now is when our front of house team starts to come into its own. I honestly don’t know how @badlydrawndrownedman and I are going to be able to thank all the people who’ve helped us turn an idea into such a huge thing. It’s not really our show any more – and I mean that in the best way.

Diary of a show #6

Yesterday, with a month to go before our first performance, we attempted our first of 5 runs with an audience (on this occasion made up of about 10 crew and set design people). We had no costumes, minimal set, next to no props and no lighting, but we did have the beginnings of a complete soundtrack. And it went surprisingly well, with fewer hitches than expected. As we knew it would, it highlighted those characters who’ve had the fewest rehearsals and therefore need the most love and attention over the next few weeks. And it scared us with how much there is still to do, in every area. But it also proved to us, right when we needed it, that we do actually have a show. And that it just might end up being really quite good.

Find out more and buy tickets at www.sedos.co.uk/2016/suchstuff.htm

Let me introduce you to Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On:

Be not afear'd, the isle is full of noises…

The Docklands Shakespeare Society has invited respected Shakespeare historian Dr Bianca Corbin to speak at an evening of recitation, interpretive dance and song by the enthusiastic members of The City of London's premier amateur theatre company, Sedos.           Four hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, his final play, The Tempest, and the Bard himself both come to life on a lost and forgotten island… only, not quite in the way he remembers writing it…           The two events collide on one unforgettable April evening.           Sedos' first immersive theatre production takes 15,000 sq ft of a building in London's Docklands and brings the world of The Tempest to life in a celebration of Shakespeare's life and works. Audiences will be able to explore the island unguided, hear its sweet and sinister noises, sit in Prospero's armchair, drink with Stephano and Trinculo and follow the spirits of the island as they torment and entertain the island's mysterious inhabitants.