GILGAMESH
The
Pit, London EC2
Opened 4 October, 2007
**
It's probably fair to say that nothing of artistic excellence has ever
come out of a sandpit. Beach Boy-in-chief Brian Wilson's retreat into
such a comforting play area has passed into legend as an emblem for his
post-Pet Sounds crack-up, and
Australian theatre company Uncle Semolina (& Friends) are similarly
ill-advised in their attempts to summon up legend from a sandpit on
stage. For they are bent on re-telling the 4000-year-old Sumerian tale
of the god-king Gilgamesh and his struggles with mortality. It is
apparently the hallmark of Uncle S (&F)'s work to approach their
stagings through play, and as the audience enters, the three performers
are already crouching in the pit, playing with toy figures, vehicles, a
glockenspiel and so on. When the show proper begins (breaking
periodically into rap, which is never a good sign with white
performers), the towers of Gilgamesh's city of Uruk are made out of
building bricks and he himself is symbolised by a six-inch-high action
figure; other props are dug out of the sand during the course of the
proceedings, which last around 70 minutes.
It's an interesting idea to look at a character's attempts to come to
terms with death from the perspective of those who have barely begun
their lives, playing infants. Interesting, but not what goes on here.
The company are more inclined toward drawing implicit parallels between
Gilgamesh and modern icons, not least political icons. More recent
events in the Middle East are seldom far away, and although no explicit
reference is made to them, there's a bit of crass Abu Ghraibery when
Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu kill the Bull of Heaven. For every
delightful moment, such as the opening line "A long time ago, when the
world was boring..." or the Sumerian version of the Great Flood story
being rendered as a ragged gospel number to the tune of "Oh Happy Day",
there is another to wince at and a whole stretch that excites nothing
much at all. I understand the company's arguments for adopting this
kind of aesthetic, but I'm unconvinced that at root it's much more than
a pretext for a lot of pratting about.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
Return to index of
reviews
for the year 2007
Return to master
reviews
index
Return to main theatre
page
Return to Shutters
homepage