Kaspar, Oct 3, 1996

by Theatr eTarquin

At Vaut Theatre, Banana Alley until late October 1996

Reviewed buy Kate Herbert around Oct 3, 1996

A "civilised" culture has always had a fascination with the barbaric and this romance with the "savage" has often manifested in his gross mistreatment. This may apply to whole racial groups and individuals.

Films, novels, poetry and theatre have all found such stories to transform into art. The Wild Boy of Aveyron, the Elephant Man and Kaspar Hauser who is the central character of Kasparˇ, by Theatre Tarquin

 Kaspar, directed by Nick Harrington, uses the narrative of Hauser's life as a springboard for a stark, stylised text and movement based performance with four actors and a live pianist. Kaspar's early undocumented life, incarcerated in a cellar, fed only bread and water, has left him unsocialised but, unlike the Wild Boy, not uneducable.

The process of his civilisation and his indoctrination in language and logic, social mores and religion is represented in bleak tableaux, faux-Berlin cabaret song and raw black and white lighting. The location is a disused railway vault on Banana Alley which provides a deep, narrow performance space and plenty of disturbingly thunderous overhead train noise to accompany Monique di Mattina's original acoustic piano composition which punctuates the action.

The process of his civilisation and his indocrination in language and logic, social mores and religion is represented in bleak tableaux, faux-Berlin cabaret song and raw black and white lighting. The location is a disused, railway vault on Banana Alley which provides a deep, narrow, claustrophobic performance space and plenty of disturbingly thunderous overhead train noise to accompany Monique di Mattina's original acoustic piano composition which punctuates the action.

The production employs the house style of Tarquin. The narrative is fragmented, the design based in grunge, and characters are non-representational. There are moments of intelligence and sharp irony and some strong theatrical images but others do not quite make the grade.

There was a dull patch in the middle of the hour. The circus freak show was predictable, and some long speeches were unnecessarily expository but Kaspar's ingenuous pleas were moving and the final death scene was a powerful and memorable tableau.

 It seems that these stories have been done so often that Tarquin needed to find something new, which it did not. I wanted to be touched in some way but came away surprisingly unmoved.

KATE HERBERT