Drei Originale

Burton-Taylor Theatre, 23/6/00

Three women and one man examine bourgeois lifestyle by talking about "things that matter". They speak interchangeably in German and English, and throw temper tantrums that fill a set designed along the lines of a student house, complete with big cushions, pizza boxes and sleeping bags. This performance could almost be four language students showing off at a house party, until the action becomes too extreme: "this is not a family, it's a crack party".

Corporate logos decorate the stage ('Yahoo' cushion, 'intel inside' marked in white powder on the floor that the man later inhales) providing a focus for deciding whether "everything becomes meaningless except the f****ing profit". The women (Caroline O'Shaughnessy, Jennifer Evans, Zoe Keniston) go barmy playing golf with the popcorn bubbling out of a popcorn machine, fanning a confetti storm with pizza boxes, drawing on their arms and rolling joints using cut grass. A lawn mower is pulled across the wooden floor and whilst you hunt for symbolism for "the hype of common life-styles", you do feel sympathy for the person who gets to clean the floor. The performance - like modern art - is whatever you want to make of it.

Bizarre anecdotes investigating today's media culture include: standing near a film factory in the rain, "Celluloid kept our drugs dry". Felix (Jorim Schraven) tells of an opera performance where everyone shoots up during the arias, hence "Heroin opera"; when asked whether there were any records, he replies, "You can play them, but not with needles." Non-German speakers, like myself, would have had no difficulty understanding the performance. The German is sliced with buzz words like "e-commerce" and "tellytubbies"; you're never far away from a burst of pop music (e.g. Entertain Us whilst the cast try and suffocate each other with bean filled cushions); and a silent video devised by Spanish students plays on one of the walls throughout.

Whilst the words 'experimental', 'multimedia' and 'Anglo-German' describe the show, I found it exciting because this is the most 'fringe' theatre I have seen - Teatre Tre La Righe have worked hard to bring us this highly original piece that examines lifestyle. As the dialogue reminds us,"life becomes meaningless so easily."

Official production debut Theater Zerbrochene Fenster, Berlin July 13th - 17th.

Lita Doolan, 23 / 6 / 00