Review of Institute at The Bristol Old Vic
Posted on: 2014-11-07
Our rating:
Institute is an absolutely stunning piece of physical theatre. Thought-provoking, intense, melancholic and bizarrely beautiful, it's a unique, bold and unforgettable experience that will make you question everything you've seen, but love every second
Multi-award winning physical theatre company Gecko says it tries to push the boundaries of 'physical exploration and theatrical invention'. Institute - its sixth production in ten years - will leave you exhilarated, amazed and, more than likely totally, brilliantly bemused - in a good way.
The plot, confusingly amorphous as it is, explores the notion of what it means to care, set in a weird, warped world where memories are filed, relationships scrutinised, and the patient becomes the carer (and vice versa). Four people prepare themselves for the outside world by undergoing a series of physical treatments - but all is not as it seems.
From an austere set of imposing filing cabinets unravels a Pandora's box of trickery and delights. Buzzers blast, Lights flash, tables and chairs extrude from hidden chambers, eerie sound effects pulsate in the evanescent glow, characters emerge unexpectedly, and shadowy dream-like apparitions appear in the background.
Big Brother is watching, the omnipotent, omnipresent eye that keeps the workers under control, as they reel open cabinets of lost dreams and forgotten memories, subsumed by hope but potentially destined for despair. Everything's thrown into question and nothing is truly as it appears in this theatrical schizophrenic symphony.
Institute takes irreverent delight in its ambiguity, wrong-footing us at every turn, inviting us to make our own interpretations. Characters exchange conversation in English, French and German but spookily cross the linguistic divide and understand each other. One minute they're making imaginary small-talk, gregarious and friendly; the next they're screaming and shouting with spontaneous Tourette-style expectorations, pirouetting in primitive dances, contorting, twisting, and hysterically writhing around.
It's an amalgam of physical dexterity, music, sound effects, unsettling scenarios and inventive set design that works with a sucker-punch to the gut but with a hypnotic, beguilingly brutal honesty. It's subversive and disconcerting but compulsively watchable.
We're wrenched through the gamut of heart-pumping highs and soul-crushing lows - there's a primal, visceral, gutteral nastiness to some of it, palpably revelling in its own twisted danse macabre and delighting in its own transgressiveness. This is sometimes dark and malevolent material, very often disturbing and unsettling. It sinks its claws in and rips out life's beating heart with a free-flowing, mischievous, existential glee.
Yet despite all the oddness, there's something extremely moving about it, something very uniquely and identifiably human. Amidst the often incomprehensible absurdity, it strikes a potently terrestrial chord, a reaching out, a yearning, a soulfulness that poetically juxtaposes with its repugnant horrors. One minute it's jazz-led ballet, graceful choreography and farcical slapstick, the next it's Hell on Earth with men controlled by long sticks like contorting, human marionettes. The ebbs and flows of life, the light and the dark. There's something very real yet something jarringly supernatural, the unsettling hint of terrible things to come.
The play unfolds like the stitched-up mutant offspring of Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali and David Lynch. We're sucked into its vortex of despair and consumed by its maelstrom of physical, visual and aural contradictions. It's at once totally unhinged yet firmly grounded in reality, exploring the fundamental human beats of pain, anger, suffering, love and loss. It's theatre at its most inventively, aggressively liberating.
Creator, director and performer Anit Lahav has produced something of a sublimely surreal masterpiece, served with solid support from Chris Evans, Ryen Perkins-Gangnes and Francois Testory, evocative lighting design by Chris Swain, and an ominous score by Dave Price.
Institute is an absolutely stunning piece of physical theatre. Thought-provoking, intense, melancholic and bizarrely beautiful, it's a unique, bold and unforgettable experience that will make you question everything you've seen, but perversely love every second of it.
You'll not see anything like it again for a very long time. Unmissable.
5/5
Reviewed by Jamie Caddick for 365Bristol
Institute is at the Bristol Old Vic until Saturday 8 November. Get your tickets online here on call the box office on 0117 987 7877.
Article by:
Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.
