THEATRE
Cavalcade by William Henderson, by Wits’ End
At 170 Leicester St Fitzroy until 21 May 2023
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars:***1/2
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly, 3MBS, on Sat 13 May, 2023. KH
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| Cavalcade-Peter Houghton-pic Ponch Hawkes |
Leave your bourgeois expectation of a narrative at the door because you ain’t gettin’ a linear story line in Cavalcade, by William Henderson and Wits' End. Dada has travelled a hundred years from Europe to Fitzroy to divert and befuddle you.
There are a few threads that those desperate for sense and meaning can grab. There are bicycles galore: tricycle, tandem, velocipede, unicycle; there are two characters, Evelyn (Peter Houghton) and Vivien (Tom Consadine), cleaners who must ad-lib a performance because the acting company has been waylaid on a rogue bus that is reportedly languishing somewhere in Lara, Bayswater or Frankston.
Evelyn and Vivien stumble valiantly but chaotically from one vignette to another, arriving perched primly on an absurdly long, multi-rider tandem – which they immediately crash noisily backstage – donning bowler hats, performing dialogues, testing props, making costumes from loo brushes and egg cartons, running a competitive sack race, dancing a waltz with a Dadaist unicycle, flipping eggs, cleaning up – and on goes the idiocy.
Major, early 20th century artists are represented: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (a urinal) Magritte’s bowler-hatted men, allusions to, and parodies of Wilde, Beckett, Brecht and Shakespeare, and pianist, Peter Dunsday, plays Erik Satie’s music, including the rarely heard Sports et Divertissements, on piano.
There are collisions of texts, rambling stream of consciousness voice overs (John Jacobs), simultaneous rantings about sovereignty and politics, a sour-faced schoolmaster who berates his recalcitrant student called (hilariously) Truncheon. Screened sporadically on the rear wall are scene titles, bicycle references, lists of known and unknown concentration camps, poetic snatches and an array of bizarre instructions to the pianist from an unseen Erik Satie, the last of which elicited applause from the audience.
Cavalcade is like one long, concrete poem with words, images and action – and clowns. This eccentric performance defies description and it deserves an audience.
by Kate Herbert
Cast: Peter Houghton, Tom Consadine, John Jacobs
Pianist: Peter Dunsday
Writer: William Henderson
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