As the new look Lyric takes shape around them, the theatre’s artistic company continues to hammer away (more quietly) at its own daring project.
The highlight of the fourth show in the Secret Theatre season is another mesmeric performance from Sergo Vares.
Following his brilliantly unsettling performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, he again stalks the stage like a tipsy ballet maestro, all swooshing arms and swaying legs.
There’s something hypnotic about his performance, in which he uses every limb to convey his character’s inner conflict.
If you’ve seen any of the ‘secret’ shows, taking place in usually off-limits parts of the theatre, you’ll be familiar with Vares and his co-stars by now.
As in my previous reviews, this is your chance to look away now if you don’t want to know the score so you can join in with the spirit of the series and join the audience without any preconceptions.
Still here? Well, show 4 is Glitterland, by Hayley Squires, a futuristic satire about worshipping at the shrine of celebrity culture, inspired by John Webster’s 17th century revenge tragedy The White Devil.
In a post-apocalyptic world pitched somewhere between 1984 and A Clockwork Orange, light entertainment has replaced religion as the opium of the masses.
State and Star, as the controlling collective is known, keeps the populace quiet by distracting them with the glamour of its stars and the titillating gossip they fuel, effectively papering over their eyes with copies of Hello and OK.
Such is the close relationship between entertainment and power (Leveson anyone?) even solemn state announcements are peppered with sparky soul songs.
Meanwhile the sleazy rulers themselves live the fast-life, indulging in prostitutes and a highly addictive drug called the High Flying Iris, which is shaped like a communion wafer and induces temporary body spasms.
When Ludo (Steven Webb) loses his seat at the high table on trumped up charges, it sparks a powder keg of revenge and recriminations which threaten to bring down the ruling body.
What plays out is a slightly convoluted game of cat and mouse between the state’s puppet master Nemo (Leo Bill), who will not even stop at whoring out his sister Victoria (Katherine Pearce) to carnal supreme leader Ciano (Hammed Animashaun), and its ‘master of operations’ (Vares’ glorified hitman) Franco.
Secret theatre was set up with the aim of challenging the increasing commodification of the arts, and this is the first show in the series to specifically address that theme, most obviously through the ‘Star’ of the piece, Victoria (Katherine Pearce).
An actress with more than a touch of the Marilyn Monroe about her, she is determined to make real art while her greasy director Monty (Nadia Albina) only wants to showcase her beauty or, as he would put it, give the audience what they want.
The dystopian world is imaginatively realised, from the invention of the High Flying Iris to the comic juxtaposition of treachery and treacle-laced pop songs.
But the whole affair’s a little confused and, for all the feints and shimmies, it fails to land any body blows.
This was the second ‘secret’ show running which I left thinking they could have spent a little longer bashing into shape, like the builders hammering away around them, before the grand unveiling.
