Project Arts Centre, Dublin
Oct 27-29
My review of Weaving
the Cry coming up just as soon as I recognise my stitch ...
If you ever tried
to picture Riders of the Sea sailing
on Galician waters, strung up with Grotowskian discipline, it would probably
look like Weaving the Cry, an
independent reaction to Synge’s play by theatre laboratory Nervousystem. Choosing
this dark miserable territory to travel is brave, and what the company
ultimately achieves with their distinct style is a harrowing allegory of a
culture at the mercy of the fierce cruel sea.
Synge’s tale is
that of Maurya, her daughters Cathleen and Nora and son Bartley. Maurya has
lost her husband and five sons to the ocean and now tries to prevent Bartley from
the same fate. At the same time, Cathleen and Nora have reason to believe that
their brother Michael has drowned. The plot highlights Synge’s eye for cultural
institutions, with the influential figure of the priest used by Maurya as an attempted gambit against Bartley, and
Cathleen and Nora’s disapproval of her sending him off on an ill word.
Nervousystem
open up the plot further, exploring Nora’s sexuality in her romancing of the
waves and giving the deceased Michael a scene where the shirt that would later
serve as an indicator to his doom is presented as an emblem of his affections
for his family. After Bartley’s departure, Maurya’s pain is represented in the
unravelling of a ball of twine that her daughters use to adorn the space,
creating what resembles a ship-deck on which Weaving the Cry will take its own course. In the end, after Bartley’s
body is found, the production invites us to mourn in what is essentially a
wake. Maurya and her daughters wash the young man’s body and sing with all
their strength. The scene seems otherworldly yet relatable, and also incredibly
honourable considering Synge’s own ear for cultural ceremony.
As with its
source material, the piece is sailing on rough waters, so to speak, and having
our empathies keep up with these cold miserable affairs is a heavy order. The
severity of the performances doesn’t do the production too many favours, and in
the midst of trying to portray the cruelty of the play’s environments, our
connections with what is human and familial is often lost. This overpowering
bleakness is heavy burden to the production, one which they fail to relieve. However,
with less science and more humanism, Nervousystem will be downright unstoppable.
What did
everybody else think?
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