Tristan and Yseult
Kneehigh Theatre
The Seymour Centre, Sydney
Until February 19
REVIEW BY BRENDAN DOYLE
Live theatre should be a joyful experience. Who wants to be bored or lectured to? The audience should feel emotionally and intellectually involved in the story being told on stage. Kneehigh Theatre from Cornwall deliver in spades with their exciting, funny and challenging version of this most ancient of love stories, that of Tristan the French knight and his beloved Yseult, an Irish beauty, which took place in Cornwall eight centuries ago.
Kneehigh have been around in Britain for 25 years, where they have a reputation for very physical theatre, often performed in unusual spaces, interpreting ancient tales from classical or folk sources. There are no new stories, as we know, only new ways of telling the stories that over the centuries have proven their universality.
Live music by a group of multi-talented musicians greets you as you enter the theatre, with songs about jilted and yearning lovers. A neon sign tells us we are in the Club of the Unloved, where an anorak-clad group of binocular-wearing love-spotters, the chorus, search the audience for the love that has never quite come their way. One of the chorus plays an LP of Wagner's version of Tristan and Isolde, and so begins a rich, multi-layered feast of theatrical and musical entertainment.
On a raised circular platform with a tall mast at the rear, reminding us of the coastal location and the sea voyages that are part of the story, we meet Mark, King of Cornwall, who has just conquered the Irish invaders. He sends Tristan to Ireland to bring back Yseult, whom Mark has claimed as the fruits of victory and will take as his queen. But the two young people fall in love, setting in train a tragic love triangle that can only end badly.
Battles, voyages, love potions and mystery follow in Kneehigh's imaginatively embroidered telling of the tale. Director Emma Rice has brought much cheeky humour to her interpretation, which draws on circus, film noir, musicals and vaudeville. She also directly involves the audience, via King Mark's bloodthirsty, crazed minder Frocin, who singles out anyone not paying attention or not responding to his direction, for instance, to celebrate the king's wedding with balloons.
Kneehigh has a remarkable way of working. Based in a collection of barns in an isolated part of the Cornish coast, they build a new team for each project. The team all contribute to the collective creation of the show. In this case, beginning with the ancient theme of the love triangle, the creative team come up with a concept and an environment in which the actors can play the story. Writers come on board and write collections of poems or lyrics or ideas. A designer and sound designer make their vital contribution too. "It is this fertile palette of words, music and design that we bring to the rehearsal room", says Rice.
Kneehigh company director Mike Shepherd, who plays King Mark, describes their work as "challenging, accessible and anarchic theatre". The secret principles they work by, he says, are "generosity, passion, bravery, humility, ambition, instinct and irreverence". These values were certainly appreciated by the Sydney audience, who gave the show a tremendous ovation after the final, mock-Wagnerian opera ending.
Tristan and Yseult is a theatrical celebration of the pain and joy of love. It speaks of longing, abandon, betrayal, joy and despair. Australian theatre companies would do well to take inspiration from this accessible and vibrantly immediate style of theatre production.
From Green Left Weekly, January 25, 2006.
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