Manna
an ear play for five voices by Dan Spielman
Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company
It is right and proper to declare in this review that I didn’t make it through the entire performance of Manna and had to leave around twenty minutes before the curtain call.
As a way of beginning, it is interesting to see how abstract performances like this are documented in the media and in online forums, to w
hich I am going to dedicate this review with a slight taste of my own thoughts.
The reviews have been generally positive, particularly Mark Hopkins in the Sydney Morning Herald. Unfortunately, I am one of those people that never really understands what Hopkins says in his reviews, but I gathered from this he was very supportive of Manna;
“The recurring context is that of dislocation, mostly by war: the ordinary order of things interrupted, fractured. Characters mistrust their own bodies, domestic rituals become sinister, and easily disturbed. Jagged fragments of sentences give way to music, the sound-scape providing an ever-changing context for new meaning to be constructed from repeated phrases and words.
“Indeed, for all its post-modern elements of non-linear narrative and multiple perspectives, Manna has a refined and unified aesthetic: an acute and explicit sensitivity to sound, light (design Emma Valente) and space is evident in both the production and performances.”
Manna is what writer Dan Spielman calls ‘an ear play for five voices’. And in so many ways it is an ear play that is might be better suited to a live recording rather than bodies in a space.
The whole ‘ear play’ thing has in fact distracted a lot of the reviewers with Jason Blake of the Sun Herald dedicating almost his entire review to the imagery;
"Actor-poet Dan Spielman and sound designer-director Max Lyandvert lay on a feast for the ears in Manna. For the eyes, however, it’s slim pickings."
But part of me feels that the lack of experience in the rehearsal room to deal with the text dramaturgically and directorially pull back its full potential. The opening moments of the show was beautiful with Gertraud Ingeborg taking the stage in front of a mirror, a face of reflection gently preening herself and her hair.
But after that it was all a little lost and confused.
Theatre Notes has been having a little debate about Manna, ironically with only a couple of people seeing it.
margaret d said of the production, “At least you are in London Alison and a long long way away from the train wreck that is "Manna." Saw it on your word and have never seen a bigger squandering of resources for no purpose.”
This is quickly followed up by Frank who pulls out the big guns and has a most magnificent rant;
“It is full of Max L directorial trademarks [based on the two previous shows of his I have witnessed]. Actors talk into microphones and leadenly intone their lines with a po-faced monotony of rhythm that matches the physical constraints straining their necks towards mics suspended from the rig impose on them. Max likes to put a transparent/opaque physical barrier between his audience and actors. Is he inserting a fourth wall? In the last two shows it was a perspex sheet - this time a lacy drape. Does it mean anything? What am I missing?
“In “Manna” I couldn't detect narrative or image continuity of any sort. There didn't seem to be repetition or accumulation of any theme - not helped by it being difficult to understand the words sometimes. It seemed to be a series of disconnected fragments of odd phrases with the deliberate avoidance of the sort of theatrical devices that might engage or hold the audience. I concentrated hard, but this dull, grey theatrical mush switched my brain off and my major emotional response was a slowly growing pity for the actors forced to endure the early giggles of the audience behind me and the restless silence from all of us for the length of the endurance test.
“Can anyone enlighten me on these techniques? What’s the story about the 4th wall?”
Max L (as in Max Lyandvert) is probably better known for his sound design skills rather than his direction. In fact, I think this show is a testament to why. Combining a text by Dan Spielman who is not only a highly regarded actor but an accomplished poet in his own right, Lyandvert knows exactly how to frame the text around a sound-scape of beautiful music and sounds. But the distance between what was being said on stage with what was shown and the sounds surrounding it was just too far apart and disjointed.
There are so many beautiful images within the show, (and with the stunning vocals of Jamal Rekabi) I could have been quite content with those two elements alone, but in many ways, this show made me pine for that time when Bogdan Koca was off down at the Pilgrim Theatre, displaying his Polish art performance theatrics despite the relative conservatism of what was happening in other theatres around the city.
Manna is certainly an adventure, but there are moments when you can happily shut your eyes and fill in the rest with your own imagination and in that way, Manna is quietly intriguing.
Lyrics and Text by Dan Spielman Director, Composer and Sound Designer Max Lyandvert
Visual Artists Kate Davis, Marisa Purcell Lighting Designer Emma Valente With Boris Brkic, Gertraud Ingeborg, Max Lyandvert, Dana Miltins, Jamal Rekabi, Jayne Tuttle
Until 12 July
Bookings 9250 1777 or http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/performance.asp?pID=252
$20 web tickets available
an ear play for five voices by Dan Spielman
Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company
It is right and proper to declare in this review that I didn’t make it through the entire performance of Manna and had to leave around twenty minutes before the curtain call.
As a way of beginning, it is interesting to see how abstract performances like this are documented in the media and in online forums, to w
hich I am going to dedicate this review with a slight taste of my own thoughts.The reviews have been generally positive, particularly Mark Hopkins in the Sydney Morning Herald. Unfortunately, I am one of those people that never really understands what Hopkins says in his reviews, but I gathered from this he was very supportive of Manna;
“The recurring context is that of dislocation, mostly by war: the ordinary order of things interrupted, fractured. Characters mistrust their own bodies, domestic rituals become sinister, and easily disturbed. Jagged fragments of sentences give way to music, the sound-scape providing an ever-changing context for new meaning to be constructed from repeated phrases and words.
“Indeed, for all its post-modern elements of non-linear narrative and multiple perspectives, Manna has a refined and unified aesthetic: an acute and explicit sensitivity to sound, light (design Emma Valente) and space is evident in both the production and performances.”
Manna is what writer Dan Spielman calls ‘an ear play for five voices’. And in so many ways it is an ear play that is might be better suited to a live recording rather than bodies in a space.
The whole ‘ear play’ thing has in fact distracted a lot of the reviewers with Jason Blake of the Sun Herald dedicating almost his entire review to the imagery;
"Actor-poet Dan Spielman and sound designer-director Max Lyandvert lay on a feast for the ears in Manna. For the eyes, however, it’s slim pickings."
But part of me feels that the lack of experience in the rehearsal room to deal with the text dramaturgically and directorially pull back its full potential. The opening moments of the show was beautiful with Gertraud Ingeborg taking the stage in front of a mirror, a face of reflection gently preening herself and her hair.
But after that it was all a little lost and confused.
Theatre Notes has been having a little debate about Manna, ironically with only a couple of people seeing it.
margaret d said of the production, “At least you are in London Alison and a long long way away from the train wreck that is "Manna." Saw it on your word and have never seen a bigger squandering of resources for no purpose.”
This is quickly followed up by Frank who pulls out the big guns and has a most magnificent rant;
“It is full of Max L directorial trademarks [based on the two previous shows of his I have witnessed]. Actors talk into microphones and leadenly intone their lines with a po-faced monotony of rhythm that matches the physical constraints straining their necks towards mics suspended from the rig impose on them. Max likes to put a transparent/opaque physical barrier between his audience and actors. Is he inserting a fourth wall? In the last two shows it was a perspex sheet - this time a lacy drape. Does it mean anything? What am I missing?
“In “Manna” I couldn't detect narrative or image continuity of any sort. There didn't seem to be repetition or accumulation of any theme - not helped by it being difficult to understand the words sometimes. It seemed to be a series of disconnected fragments of odd phrases with the deliberate avoidance of the sort of theatrical devices that might engage or hold the audience. I concentrated hard, but this dull, grey theatrical mush switched my brain off and my major emotional response was a slowly growing pity for the actors forced to endure the early giggles of the audience behind me and the restless silence from all of us for the length of the endurance test.
“Can anyone enlighten me on these techniques? What’s the story about the 4th wall?”
Max L (as in Max Lyandvert) is probably better known for his sound design skills rather than his direction. In fact, I think this show is a testament to why. Combining a text by Dan Spielman who is not only a highly regarded actor but an accomplished poet in his own right, Lyandvert knows exactly how to frame the text around a sound-scape of beautiful music and sounds. But the distance between what was being said on stage with what was shown and the sounds surrounding it was just too far apart and disjointed.
There are so many beautiful images within the show, (and with the stunning vocals of Jamal Rekabi) I could have been quite content with those two elements alone, but in many ways, this show made me pine for that time when Bogdan Koca was off down at the Pilgrim Theatre, displaying his Polish art performance theatrics despite the relative conservatism of what was happening in other theatres around the city.
Manna is certainly an adventure, but there are moments when you can happily shut your eyes and fill in the rest with your own imagination and in that way, Manna is quietly intriguing.
Lyrics and Text by Dan Spielman Director, Composer and Sound Designer Max Lyandvert
Visual Artists Kate Davis, Marisa Purcell Lighting Designer Emma Valente With Boris Brkic, Gertraud Ingeborg, Max Lyandvert, Dana Miltins, Jamal Rekabi, Jayne Tuttle
Until 12 July
Bookings 9250 1777 or http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/performance.asp?pID=252
$20 web tickets available
Image: Jayne Tuttle, Dana Miltins, Jamal Rekabi, Boris Brkic & Gertraud Ingeborg
PHOTO BY HEIDRUN LOHR
PHOTO BY HEIDRUN LOHR
12 comments:
Nic,
you don't tell us precisely why you had to leave twenty minutes before the curtain call - was it a particular poetic image, a black dog barking at the back door, or did you just forget to close your eyes for a while?
I admire your honesty concerning your problems with Mr Hopkins reviews, but surely, in the end, nobody understands what arts reviewers write do they, let alone read them?
Previewers on the other hand...
Perhaps Hopkins was inferring that if you don't understand the review Nic, then you won't like the show. i.e. a review as a mirror of the opaqueness of production in question, no?
Nicholas, you've disappeared off my bloglines. What's happened? Anyway, nice to catch up.
Just to clarify - I wasn't debating the production on TN - how could I? and I might have agreed that there were problems - but I have read the text, and was speaking from there. It's not surprising that people don't know how to listen or even place this stuff, although it has a history and a context and is by no means wankery but serious exploration of something that (I find) deeply interesting. We could go on pretending that modernism or indeed most 20C art never happened, but I would miss it...
Benito - it was a black dog barking at the back gate! How did you know?
And thanks for your insights into reviewers as a previewer. You know I love your articles Benito. When are we beering?
And welcome back Alison... it's good to have you back amongst the fray.
I totally agree with you and consequently decided to make my review more about the reportage on Manna, than about the show in particular.
Sometimes I have the feeling that some of the reviews I read in Sydney, both in print and online don't understand what they are writing about. Whether that is the fault of the productions or the writers is another debate altogether.
Or as Benito points out - a review is 'a mirror of the opaqueness of production in question'.
Quite a clever theory I think. Wait till Barrie Blood n Guts Kosky comes back and watch the metaphors fly.
The first Wharf2Loud production of this series was all visual and no words, this one is described by most people as a radio play, best listened to with eyes wide shut. I wonder if the third one might actually give us words and action, or, to sound boringly old-fashioned (sorry Ms Croggan) a play?
Hi Anonymous - I actually think it is really great that the STC are commissioning adventures in performance production. Where they go with it, I am not sure, but it is a new start.
Besides, if you want a straight up play, there are a plethora of venues to go to throughout the city. One of which is right next door to Wharf 2.
It's Croggon, anonymous (ok, a common mistake, but still...) And if you read my blog, you'll discover I rather like plays. Even really old plays. I also like things that are not plays. I don't see why these things are placed in opposition, when the world is plenty big enough for both.
I Believe the problem lies in that as a wharf2 show, the budget is considerably smaller than wharf1 - which in turn meant only a 3 week rehearsal period.
This is not a performance that can be devised in 3 weeks, (how many really can?!)
Because of this, i think that things were just not executed to their full extent. This could have been taken so much further - especially things like the live sound foley. It was there, but it wasn't there.. and i would like more of that (if you are to bother at all)
Anon.. wharf 2 definitely needs to program like this..why should stc only cater for their majorly pensioner based subscibers?? but maybe it needs to spend some money on the development period if they want bums on seats!
Oh yes! Sydney Art Theatre! How many wonderful nights were spent there on those hideous seats in theatrically-inspired wonderment.
Blast you for reminding me Pickard!
I recommend reading the review of this play on the Australian Stage blog--it sums it up perfectly. An irresponsible waste and ultimately unfair to Spielman to allow his work to be given such a high profile showing when he was clearly not ready.
I thought that a review which clearly did not understand the provenance of Spielman's text. That's no crime - most people are not familiar with any sort of poetry, let alone contemporary poetry. But I do think critics ought to be at least a little literate in the areas they're critiquing. I do know a fair bit about poetry, and I thought it was a fascinating performance text (and even if you didn't like it, which is fair enough, it beats me how you could call it "clichéd, unadventurous dialogue" - !!! It might be criticised for many things, but cliche and lack of adventure aren't among them.)
And as I've said elsewhere - why does only experimentation get slammed for being an "irresponsible" waste of money, when much bigger shows that might deserve such slamming more get off scot free?
Alison, your loyalty to Spielman is admirable, but simply because you, as a poet, found his words on the page "fascinating" does not mean critics who actually saw the play are wrong in their assessment. Also it is not fair to say that "experimentation" gets slammed as a waste of money--Wharf2Loud exists for the purpose of allowing works to evolve and find a form--it is when they are done badly, pretentiously, and with no regard to the audience that critics become annoyed. A low-profile workshop with a clear-eyed dramaturg is where this idea should have been allowed to quietly develop, and if it ever became something worth putting on a stage, then it should have been given such a venue. Sounds like an error in judgment all around.
Phillip - I'll pass over the "loyalty" swipe - unanswerable, really - by saying that in matters of literary criticism my loyalties tend to art rather than to people. If I didn't believe that a work was interesting, I wouldn't claim that it was. Poetry matters too much to me to cheapen it by doing otherwise.
I'm hampered by having not seen the production: my understanding is that there were difficulties with the realisation, but having read the text, I think to drive those problems home to a badly written script is mistaken. It's deeply worked language, and obviously poses a lot of interesting - perhaps intractable - theatrical problems. It was always going to be a hard call. It sounds as if it didn't work. But it's one thing to say it failed, and quite another to claim that the experiment wasn't worth doing.
Clearly that critic isn't "wrong", in the sense that she has her own responses and they are what they are. But just as clearly, she doesn't understand where the writing is coming from or what it seeks to do. Perhaps she'd say much the same things about Kurt Schwitters or Ezra Pound or John Ashbery. Many others have. And of course there's the question of individual taste. But the hostility in this review suggests ignorance and incuriosity (and a rather privileged insight into a writer's motivations that seems rather beyond the purview of criticism) rather than informed response.
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