Theatre / Amit Lahav
Review: The Wedding, Bristol Old Vic
Gecko are a physical theatre company with a big difference: they have a social and political commitment that they are able to translate into haunting, meaningful and provocative work, without banging drums or trying to get a message across through linear storytelling.
Their latest touring show The Wedding is an audacious total-theatre spectacle that uses their largest ensemble to date, and sets alight the epic space of the Bristol Old Vic stage with sound, passion, energy and evocative imagery. Under the visionary artistic direction of Amit Lahav and associate director Rich Rusk, Gecko dive deeper and more conceptually into themes explored ten years ago in their vaudevillian take on the Middle Eastern conflict The Arab and The Jew – to shattering effect.
Pic: Rich Rusk
The Wedding takes the metaphor of marriage and asks what it is – a social contract, a binding, an arena where the tangle of love and conflict plays out endlessly – and expands it into a wide-angle view where belonging, homeland, and the ties of community are no longer the birthright of so many of the world’s peoples.
is needed now More than ever
Performers speaking and interacting in a variety of mother tongues land on the stage via portals, like travellers from afar: a huge metal tube slide, trapdoors in office kiosks and, at one point, a battered suitcase that unzips to allow in a trickle of refugees (or is it one of Cameron’s ‘swarms’?). That sequence is the most moving of all, covering a gamut of emotions of people living on the edge, with outstanding performances from Katie Lusby and Chris Evans. The whole ensemble shares an eloquent physical language which varies from the tender to the frantic, creating an emotional Babel they must all inhabit.
The show is an impressionistic feast for the senses, with superbly conceived, fast-moving sets that include a towering table ringed with faceless revellers that seems to float in mid-air, and small office-like boxes and lampshaded chairs that glide across the stage. Lighting and soundscape are breathtakingly full without being either blinding or deafening. Everything is dosed – it’s a lot, but it’s never too much.
From the sudden landings at the start to the standing ovation at the end, The Wedding is an unmissable piece of work from a company at the top of its game.
The Wedding finishes at Bristol Old Vic on Saturday, January 20. For more info, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/the-wedding.html
Top pic: Richard Haughton
Read more: A booming Brian Blessed on the roof of Bristol Old Vic
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