Show challenges audience’s patience
The Crimson House – Lemi Ponifasio/MAU St James Theatre, March 5 Reviewed by Ann Hunt
IN THIS world premiere, Lemi Ponifasio challenges his audience’s patience and endurance. At almost two hours long, the work is very slow and for much of the time little happens. But it is worth the wait.
The Crimson House is a lament for a world where we have sold our souls for the safety of perpetual surveillance. Ponifasio and masterly lighting designer Helen Todd paint a bleak picture of a black and white dystopia. There is literally no colour. But it is like watching superlative black and white film in its tonal simplicity. The technology and film is by Tim Gruchy. The phenomenal electronic sound is by Ponifasio and Dean Roberts.
The stage is bare save for black and grey backdrops and stridently bright strips of fluorescent light which change shape and position. The dancers’ minimal movement resembles that of tai chi in its deliberateness and weight of gesture. They move as if on wheels and at times appear to float.
To say little happens is simplistic. As in Butoh theatre, apparently little happens, but there is much going on if you let it. Your mind will do the work if you stop questioning what it is you think you are seeing.
No-one touches anyone else. There is no warmth and no connection. Off stage a man groans and cries out. Another speaks fast in a foreign language. The closing image of a prone man on the floor, writhing in front of the bars of light like a prison, his body bloodied, is haunting.
We must ask ourselves if this is what we really want, this marriage to electronica and surveillance in the name of perpetual ‘‘safety’’. Speak now or forever hold your peace.