On Tuesday I went to see The Coming Storm by Forced Entertainment. I was first introduced to the work of FE while doing a devised theatre course at the City Lit more than 10 years ago. They say their intention is to take theatre and break it and then see what they can make from the bits. Sometimes at an FE show you sit through plenty of tedium and broken stuff to be presented, finally, with a moment of pure genius that could only have been arrived at by risking that it won't work at all. And that's what I like about them. They take that risk in their devising process and so I'm happy to risk a right butt numbing just to see what they come up with.
The first show I saw was Disco Relax. A show with drunk, angry, clown like people staggering, crying and ranting. I loved the commitment to the characters, or 'versions' of themselves that the cast had created for the stage. But the show dragged, and I desperately wanted those characters to interact with each other. But they didn't. They sat around with running mascara wailing and angry.
Then Quizoola. A durational performance In the "Museum Of..." before it got redeveloped into something less ephemeral and more profitable. I think it was probably November, or February. And it was cold. And my friend and I sat and sat and sat captivated by a series of pairs of people, in bad clown make-up, asking each other questions. Questions from a script. Questions that followed up interesting answers like a dog with a bone. What's the best thing you've ever put your cock into? My wife's vagina. What scares you? Flying. What do you do for a living? I'm an airline pilot. Eventually - despite forays for warming soup and tea - we got cold. Too cold to stay. The company members hanging out by the entrance were disappointed when we left. So were we. But there's a point before your toes fall of where you have to go somewhere warmer if you've got the option.
First Night - which almost failed. It pushed the boundaries of how much you can bore an audience (they took an extended tea break in the middle of the show). But..but...then that moment of pure genius. A man, zipped up to his neck in one of those enormous checked shopping/ laundry bags, being chased across the stage by someone brandishing a musical saw.Worth watching every single minute to get that, it really was.
I saw The Travels too. But I don't remember much about it - beyond the haunting quality of people describing visiting all the streets in Britain with a particular name. There was a quality of sodium light and decay about it. Kind of a theatrical equivalent of reading Iain Sincliar - but without getting stuck in a quagmire of obtuse prose.*
Exquisite pain which was just two people talking. With some back projections. But somehow it worked. Storytelling. And something about a typewriter.
Then there was Bloody Mess. Which was bloody great. A great big shambolic rock show of a theatre piece. With a woman in a gorilla suit lobbing sweets at the audience and pushing one of those lightweight striped canvas pushchairs like the one I had when i was a kid. She'd take the head of the gorilla suit off to talk to the audience from time to time. But every time she put the head back on, even though it was a pretty tatty gorilla suit, I forgot entirely the woman inside...there was just this psycho angry gorilla charging around the stage causing chaos. Ace.
Spectacular which wasn't really. In fact it was a bit dull.
But what of this latest? The Coming Storm. I'll start with the downside - some of the tropes where the acts of creating the performance "we weren't going to do this bit", "we agreed that you wouldn't' do this bit", "I forgot to do my dance" were made explicit - really didn't work for me this time. Perhaps I'm so used to them they seem unnecessary or lazy the 'drama' of them seemed a little forced. But - on the whole this was a lot warmer and fuzzier than any other FE show I've seen. Mellow even. A great chaotic jumble of narratives. Lots of play with an upright piano and with music in general. Maybe I just find the presence of pianos inherently comforting these days. An act of on stage theft of audacious cheek and great beauty. And to cap it all a dinosaur chase where I had that lovely feeling of not really understanding how we'd got to this point but being very happy to let it all wash over me and sink in.
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* I want to love Iain Sinclair's writing, I really do. I love the premise of his books - the subjects he takes on. But I always get really bogged down and stuck with the prose. Half the time I get half way through and founder.
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