LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
What? Physical Theatre
Where? Assembly Big Top
until August 26
Rating? *****
TOLLING bells, cuckoo clocks,
fanfares, or perhaps just the drunken singing of Happy Birthday.
No matter how you measure the passage of time, it leads to one
conclusion: death. Its this that is the beginning, middle, and end
of Derevo's manic, inspired journey between the lines and concepts
of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Underneath the
colourful canvas of a circus big top, this Russian company initiates
a parade of medieval grotesques and modern nightmares. The imagery is
superbly hectic, with beastly, bizarre flourishes. There's gibbering,
cruel indifference to suffering, a sense of being caught up in a maelstrom
of distorted values, glittering abuses, lost souls. And, as the circular
stage revolves - with the performers having to time their exits and
entrances to a split-second - one's own ability to discern good deeds
from malevolent trickery becomes unsure. But amid the grotesqueries,
the flames, the whirlwinds, and showers of dust, there are instances
of exquisite beauty and tenderness. There's the ditsy little jester
who persuades the somewhat saturnine "Traveller" to leave
aside combativeness and engage with humanity. His birthday party turns
into an act of communion, with wine and bread shared among the audience.
It's a rumbustious, genial precursor to a final section of uplifting
grace, spirituality, and redemption. This epic is performed by only
four people. But their headlong energies, superbly channelled into seemingly
reckless physicality, easily persuade you that the multitudes of Heaven
and Hell are pell-melling everywhere. Marv Brennan