PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Arnolfini, Bristol (Fri 11-Sat 12 Nov)

A wise man once said that he preferred radio to TV because "the pictures are better on the radio". Void Story is a radio play which provides its own pictures. Or maybe it’s a graphic novel with a live soundtrack. Either way, it seems to be missing the point of both media - but that may be the point.

The cast (Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor) sit at tables with mics, reading their scripts. This is admittedly artifice: after a long run, they could have learned their parts if they'd wanted to. The dialogue is naive, manned, over-expository; pointing out and describing everything which happens. Radio hasn't been like this for decades; neither have comic books. Maybe that's the point, too.

Big, photomontage illustrations of the action are presented on the Arnolfini cinema screen. Faces are constructed from parts of different photographs; when characters are injured (as they frequently are) their bodies are twisted in unrealistic, cartoony ways. We see a picture of a gun, we hear a gunshot, and we hear a voice saying (in a deadpan, unsurprised tone) "I've been shot." It's a strange, distanced form of storytelling: quite interesting at first, but wearing thin after 90 minutes.

There is a story - kind of. Kim and Jackson are evicted from their home in a futuristic, post-holocaust England: they have a series of picaresque encounters in which they are always passive, and which all end disastrously. They are kidnapped and imprisoned in a lorry full of rotting meat; they are placed in a hotel room with a ghost in it; they are co-opted into a dance marathon until they collapse of exhaustion. There are some disturbing and amusing vignettes along the way, but it rapidly becomes clear that their wanderings are never going to have any actual point.

It may be unfair to complain of a lack of content in an evening which is mainly an experiment in form. The piece is asking how far you can go in producing a story without a plot and what happens when the "actors" are stick-figures and voices which can never engage the audience. The word "deconstruction" comes up a good deal in the after-show talk.

It's quite interesting, more art installation than theatrical work, but in the the end it all feels rather pointless. Probably, though, that is the point. (Andrew Rilstone)

Copyright Andrew Rilstone 2011