Mind-boggling production amazes
THE GOD COMPLEX by Sylvaine Strike, featuring Daniel Buckland. PJ's until July 13
SYLVAINE Strike is the festival's "featured artist", which gives her the honour of presenting four plays, as did Mike van Graan last year as the festival's inaugural festival playwright.
They are Black and Blue (reviewed last week in The Herald), The Harmful Effects of Tobacco, Agreed and The God Complex.
The bad news is that three of Strike's presentations at the festival are already finished.
Fortunately for festival goers, The God Complex looks like it will be a favourite and it runs until Saturday. The in-between news is that you had better book a ticket very soon, for it will almost certainly be sold-out by then.
As for The God Complex, how does one review such a mind-boggling show? Not just because it bends how your brain looks at the big issues of faith and what it means to be human but also because its sole performer, and co-writer with Strike, Daniel Buckland, does incredible things in this piece of physical theatre.
It also – bonus at the festival – is really funny as Buckland has superb comedy timing.
The genes of the father (Andrew) are clear in his acrobatic ability, also honed by working in the Cirque du Soleil but it is not the first time he has worked with Strike and she plays to his strengths in The God Complex.
He plays a man, first just a projected silhouette, then floating physically into existence – but what is happening, is he being born? Or is he on his way to heaven perhaps? We are never told, and there are very few words, but the angelic voices on the sweeping soundtrack seem to signify something spiritual.
All too soon we see how man is seduced into the "gimme, gimme, gimme" culture where all we have to do is snap our fingers to have it all. Then, just as quickly as we can amass worldly goods, we see how we can lose them all in a blink of an eye.
It is hard to describe the plot or action as so much is theatre of the imagination, of which Strike is a master. The beauty of her dramatic approach is that the viewer will take away what he or she reads into what their image of "God" and "man" is.
As with her other work, it is not what happens, it is how it happens that makes magical theatre and Buckland is her bewildered magician. He is dressed in black and white on a monochrome set, where white becomes black and black becomes white until you wonder which is truth and which is dream. His athletic ability comes to the fore in the skilful use of the giant hoop, or "roué cyr", visually echoing Da Vinci's ideal Vitruvian man in perfectly timed manoeuvres.
This multi-layered piece can be read on several levels with the final few moments knitting the divide between shadow and self together in a most satisfying way.
Whether or not you are a person with a belief in a deity, it is exquisite theatre, as well as a physical and spiritual meditation on breaking out of man's mould. – Gillian McAinsh
