Culture

Directed by Jennifer Aitken, Starring Joel Rees and Hana Aoake, (3.5/5).

My thoughts, as I watched scenes from Wounds to the Face, kept returning to Antonin Artaud’s precept that words should have the same significance in theatre as they do in dreams. According to the five-minute crash course on the Theatre of Catastrophe I received after the show, this was not at all what Howard Barker believed in his essay about the human face in the private and public worlds. But the text of the play itself didn’t grab me by the throat. Maybe that was because only selected scenes were shown, or because Aitken and her actors didn’t make the most of the robust, even Shakespearean poetry of the play (so the internet assures me). However, the images and mise-en-scène of the production were so beautiful and intriguing that I didn’t mind its deficiencies.

 
The set was almost a character on its own. As anyone who traipsed through the theatre last week will know, a 1.5m x 3m pile of loose dirt had been carted in and it sat between traverse seating, with a clear reflecting plastic sheet at one end and a makeup-strewn bureau and mirror at the other. What impressed me most was the texture of the set design. Productions in Allen Hall often fall back on black boxes and lighting, which makes for a tidy blank canvas. Aitken’s set was gritty and slick, gouged and smooth, natural without falling into naturalism, and neutral but certainly not blank. The shadows of dirt clods changed the landscape with every change of the light. In a particularly deft touch, the two opposing reflective surfaces - plastic and mirror - let the audience see more angles of the stage than typically allowed by traverse, and trapped the shadowed ghostly faces of the audience alongside the those of the actors.

 
The actors themselves played multiple roles, signalled mainly by changes in costume. However, perhaps if Rees and Aoake had invested more energy into differentiating between characters, the piece would have had more of an edge. Rees’ face and body were dramatically side-lit and he used them so elegantly that he drew the eye whether speaking or silent. Aoake’s passion and commitment were such that she can project emotion while her back was turned and hidden under a red parasol. I also appreciated their ability to crawl all over each other – too often on stage this looks like an embarrassed and excruciatingly awkward form of high-school dancing. Aoake and Rees made it look sexy.
 

To mention that the lighting was amazing seems a little superfluous, given that Martyn Roberts designed it. Naturally, it was. A strong, dramatic play between light and shadows was used to great effect, beautifully illuminating the mobile shapes of the actors’ faces. What I had not seen before was the use of an eerie twilight wash that was curiously flat and maintained a subtle state of anxiety between scenes that swelled as characters re-entered bringing their restlessness along with.
 

In all, it was a very assured piece, and I enjoyed the production if not the play.