Photo - AT SchaeferSimon Stephens is a noted English playwright with a string of plays to his credit and numerous awards including a 2005 Olivier for best new play for On the Shore of the Wide World. In 2007 he was nominated as best foreign playwright of the year by German Critics for Motortown and his next play, Pornography was first produced by Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg in the same year. Its UK premier was in 2008 as part of the Traverse Fringe programme.
Melbourne Festival audiences are being treated to the German production of Pornography performed by ensemble members from Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg and directed by Sebastian Nubling.
As the audience walks into the Playhouse at the Arts Centre they discover the cast on stage. The backdrop is a vast fragmented image of Breughel's The Tower of Babel. In front of it are a number of classroom tables and chairs, plastic buckets full of pieces that could be parts of a large jigsaw, with piles of these pieces scattered around the stage. The characters are busying themselves amongst the chaos, talking, bumping into each other. Some appear to be putting together a jigsaw puzzle, searching through piles of pieces looking for the right one. It's as if they are anxiously trying to create order from disorder, but no one is really connecting with anyone else.
Then an older woman with a stick strikes it on the floor and the action begins. The performers come together to pile a number of tables on top of each other creating a scaffold or tower right at the front of the stage. One of the actors shows his knowledge of Aussie slang by assuring the front rows: No worries, they never fall. This is the only English in the performance which is spoken in German with English surtitles.
My understanding of German is very limited and I relied heavily on the surtitles which are conveniently on both sides of the stage, so that you are able to look left and right and still catch the action.
The play has been written so that it may be performed by any number of actors and the seven stories may be put together in any order that the director chooses. For this production there are eight actors, some of whom play more than one role, all of whom are always on stage. Sometimes, in the background, they act like a Greek Chorus, echoing, repeating, commenting on what the main character is saying.
The action is set in London in the days leading up to the horror of the 7th July terrorist attacks in 2005. These attacks had a huge impact on the British and were made worse by the fact that they were carried out by British citizens, just a day after London had been awarded the 2012 Olympics (ahead of Paris).
Each of the seven stories revolves around the everyday, mundane lives of the characters. They could each be performed as a monologue but the director has chosen to make some of them a duologue. Tge wife and mother buys herself some sandals for summer, wonders why her husband would want to buy paint and seeks comfort in cuddling her child. At work she is involved with finalising an important report that it is crucial to keep secret from competitors. The young schoolboy, toughs it out in a disadvantaged school, variously a bully and a victim, a racist and a white supremacist who is obsessed with his awakening sexuality. The lovers, a brother and sister who fight and get drunk and finally cannot resist their physical attraction for each other. An older academic meets up with a former student who has always wanted him to notice her and when he does she doesn't like what she sees. The old woman, passes a house where people are having a barbecue, knocks on the door and asks for some chicken.
The old woman, along with the suicide bomber, are, perhaps ironically, the most sympathetic characters. We travel with the bomber as he tells us of saying goodbye to his wife and children, boarding the train, getting anxious about missing his connection, commenting on the people around him and the fact that they don't notice him or check his ticket. He is delighted, or is it amazed, to remember that that the teenage girls at the counter of Boots (a British Pharmacy Chain) hadn't even check the signature on his card and happily sold him 500 bottles of peroxide for hair dye and 50 bottles of nail varnish remover because he said he was the runner on a movie. Finally there is the Dead, a roll call, with mentions of everyday aspects of their lives, of all those killed in the London Bombings; the 51 people whose lives ended that day by accident, and/or by coincidence.
Despite the forward motion towards the horror of the bombings and their aftermath, and the depressing message of disconnection, there are moments of real humour in this production. One can't help but laugh at the drunken antics of the two lovers and what they manage to do with plastic water bottles. It is so frenetic and, like it or not, we can see parts of ourselves in each of the characters. Sex is overt and up front in this production but always in context.
The performances are universally strong and energetic. It is always wonderful to see an ensemble of actors, young and not so young, who work so closely and supportively to create a performance. The writing is strong and this production by Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg is superbly well crafted. Director Sebastian Nubling has brought the whole together in a memorable and affecting way.
Pornography is a powerful and confronting play that doesn't offer answers. What it does is wake us up to the mundane details of our lives and the lack of inter-connectedness that seems to be a symptom of our times. And yet it reminds us also that, no matter what, human beings continue to reach out for intimacy and search for meaning.
If you love theatre and like to be challenged, moved out of your comfort zone and left with much to think about, then this is for you.
Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg
Pornography
by Simon Stephens
Director Sebastian Nübling
Venue: the Arts Centre, Playhouse
Dates/Times: Thu 15 – Sat 17 Oct at 8pm | Sun 18 Oct at 6pm
Duration: 2hr 10min no interval
Visit: www.melbournefestival.com.au | www.schauspielhaus.de