Phobia
is one seriously weird show. Coming from me, that's pretty high praise:
I'm an admirer of the strange and wonderful; whatever expands the imaginative
lexicon of the stage.
You see, Phobia isn't a mere play; it's a self-proclaimed
opera without songs, based on the Alfred Hitchcock's acclaimed psychological-noir
film Vertigo. The blurb for the Arts Fest programme does no
justice at all to the work - we're told that viewers will be "transported
back to a radio studio", where the soundtrack to a movie will be recreated
with Foley effects; the old-school sound effects made by, say, twisting
celery behind a microphone to simulate a breaking bone. You buy the
ticket expecting a historical behind-the-scenes look at the manufacture
of suspense - kooky, but still digestible - but that's not all you get
by any means.
Instead, it's apparent immediately as you walk into the theatre that
you're dealing with a something more than a science demonstration. The
cluttered machinery and apparatus of the show is laid out to within
a footstep of the front-row seats, and looking at the multiple desks,
each stocked with a microphone and telephone handset, it becomes clear
that you're being taken to a stage beyond the radio studio of the past
- a hyperstudio, if you will.
The show begins with the actors/sound artists in 1950s period costume,
sitting and standing at their desks. They split the lines between them,
solo and in chorus, regardless of character, gender, or timbre of voice,
accompanied by accordion, rubber band, maracas and mishandled violin.
And it soon becomes clear that the intent of these theatrics isn't to
mimic the concrete sounds of the real world. Nor is it to delve into
the repertoire of the low-tech past of radio, since synthesisers and
CD playback are also generously used to build up the sonic landscape.
Nor is Chamber Made Opera simply testing the infinite possibilities
of sound: the actors' actions, attitudes and antics are visual keys
to alternate understandings of this complex tapestry of noise. A fellow
audience member noted that Phobia seemed like a play he should
watch twice - once with his eyes shut, to concentrate on the sonic effects
alone, and once with them open, to lay bare the mad artistry behind
the sound. And certainly, while much of the Foley equipment became aural
instruments for theatre (such as the plastic-wrapped mattress where
actors collapsed, the walkway wired to amplify footsteps, the tiny door
and doorframe, used to generate slams) other equipment was used purely
for visual effect, like Mal Webb's ripping open a bag of raw meat to
illustrate a description of churning intestines, or Mei Lai Swan's deadpan
manipulation of a toy car to mirror the movements of a real car in the
script.
Not unlike Play on Earth,
which tried creating an online virtual performing space between three continents,
Phobia appears intent on creating a new form of theatrical space
- located in the dimension of sound, but also possessed of distorted visual
fragments. Such images were often eerily apparitional: at the back of the
stage, behind a translucent screen, Mei Lai Swan somersaulted in slow motion
down the stairs to the sound of celery crunching; in another scene, she
placed men's shoes on her hands and bent over, creating a dancing couple
whose disembodied legs were all we saw of them.
What is recreated on stage, then, is not a soundtrack studio, but what
a delusional paranoiac might imagine a soundtrack studio to be - where
sounds are not made via the simplest or most natural means, but by the
most theatrical, disturbing ones. It's an excellent exercise in the
creation of a mood of subversion, a remarkable reorchestration of the
human senses in relation to theatre.
Still, from a non-academic perspective, I can't help but feel something's
lost during this intense experimentation. The bizarre effects are entirely
appropriate to the themes of Vertigo - an intensely psychological
film which tells of a private detective duped into pursuing a woman
whom he's been told is insane. Yet with all the switching of roles and
dematerialisation of action, the story becomes difficult to follow and
the characters never become real enough for true empathy to occur. I
very much wanted to feel emotionally invested in this piece, yet by
the end I was left feeling detached, unsatisfied, and objectively rather
than subjectively appreciative of the wonders of the performance.
Phobia deserves much applause for its splendid execution by
a versatile cast who double as musicians and voice performers, as well
as its significant theoretical development of the medium of theatre.
Yet without that crucial emotional connection to the piece, that gut
feeling of the delight of watching a play, I can't quite recommend it
to the lay viewer/auditor. If you've the fortune to have this production
play in your city, watch Vertigo first on video at home so
you can first grasp the heart and stakes of the story. Then treat Phobia
as a companion piece: it rises like an electronic phantom to mess with
your mind, disordering your perceptions of film, theatre, and your senses
themselves. |
"Phobia is an excellent exercise in the creation of a mood of subversion,
a remarkable reorchestration of the human senses in relation to theatre"
Credits
Author and Director: Douglas Horton
Composer: Gerry Brophy
Design Coordinator: Jaxqui Everitt
Lighting Designer: Gina Gascoigne
Sound Designer: Graeme Leak and Darren Steffen
Performers: Paul Binns, Michael Havir, David Joseph,
Chris Lewis, Mei Lai Swan and Mal Webb
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