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“Box” explores that curious mutual relationship, revealed to us through quantum physics, between the observer and the observed. This is a “promenade” play, in which the audience can walk in and around round the small islands of dramatic action at will, observing the players, and being observed by them, eyeball to eyeball. The effect is quite extraordinary. A devised play, which explores something of the nature of subjectivity, “Box” came out of the shared thoughts, images and actions of the Experimental Theatre Company. They played together with storytelling, with dada cabaret, with puppet shows and soundscapes, and then combined the various sounds, ideas and means of expression which had surfaced through several weeks of workshops. A principal theme is the way in which mankind deals with order and chaos, in real life and in stories. The room is - unsurprisingly - full of a number of boxes of different shapes and sizes. One of the strands of the play is the Greek myth of Pandora, who opened the box out of which escaped all the evil of the world. Another strand is the nature of the pinhole camera, the simple box instrument which can capture and contain the image of what lies outside it. As a member of the audience, you are never quite sure of what is about to happen next, as the players interweave the themes of perspective, interpretation and obedience by means of the separate stories, monologues and tableaux which make up the piece. There is much action and movement. Many ideas and states of being are expressed, without the play’s ever becoming dry or over-intellectual. The play moves between patches of narrative and strangely poetic and dada-esque moments of absurdity, which then elide back again into meaning. As the programme notes, the starting point for this play is basic: a box is after all a symbol of the human capacity to create order and to categorize. The Experimental Theatre Company have produced a play which explores and contains chaos in a memorable way. Acted by a team of players whose timing and intonation is pretty well perfect, “Box” is funny, stimulating, playful, unusual, completely unpretentious, and enjoyable on many levels. E.T. 4.3.3 |
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