To Pave by Ecorche Theatre, REVIEW, 15 June 1994

At Courthouse Theatre, Carlton

Until June 25, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert around 15  June 1994.

This review published in The Melbourne Times after 15 June 1994

 

To Pave, directed by dancer-choreographer Alison Halit, constructs some witty and evocative physical images involving bricks and people. The three actor-dancers perform with, and are often upstaged by, a proliferation of white bricks. "Never do a show with children, animals or bricks."

 

The performers pile bricks on themselves and each other, construct cairns, pillars, walls, sculptures, cars, supermarkets. They prance, dance, leap and balance precariously on piles of bricks. My favourite image was of a woman trying to relax on a random pile of bricks. The danger of moving through and tossing (yes, tossing) bricks, becomes part of the drama.

 

In fact, it is the dramatic content. When the performers spoke, the piece lost all its impact. The dialogue was trite, repetitive and the acting pedestrian. The bricks generally had more weight than the performers.

 

To Pave feels like a workshop script. The unintegrated collage of styles is at its most successful without speech but with action choreographed over a dynamic and professional musical backing by Benedict Deane-Johns. The movement is generally clever, abstract and lyrical and the dancers competent, but there are a couple of crashingly melodramatic and romantic dance sequences.

 

Although this is a non-narrative piece, the three performers play two-dimensional characters. Sylvia (Vivenne Lucas), a self-centred artist, prepares an installation. Track (Adrian Nunes) studies medicine and cheats on his exams. Tracey, (Corinne Larkins) a working mother, supports the other two. They juggle their lives and each other just as they symbolically juggle bricks. All the naturalistic stuff is extraneous. It is great when it sticks to the action.

by Kate Herbert