Critical and public opinion has been divided over the last few weeks by shows like Attempts on Her Life and Anthony Neilson’s The Wonderful World of Dissocia, as I’ve blogged about here. And although I was in the dissenters’ corner for both, I am giving Dissocia another go this weekend – and have put my money where my mouth (and pen) are and have actually bought a ticket to see it again. And it’s partly thanks to a response posted here this weekend from someone who said, “As someone who has been diagnosed with BiPolar and sought out its positives to lead an engaging and fulfilling life, you and your superb actors really caught the nub of the dynamic of what it is to be mentally ill. It seems that a lot of people (notably the Guardian critic) are overly caught up on how they view mental illness - rather than possibly stopping to realise that the important thing is engaging with what it is like to be in that position.”
One of the joys of the theatre is the ability that it has of taking you into other, private worlds – as well as reflecting your own. Clearly, for this correspondent, the success of the play was to do with reflecting his own experience. Now I want to see if I can make the imaginative leap that either I failed to make – or the play failed to make for me – to do the same thing.
But the fact that its producing reactions – albeit (bi)polarised ones – means that it’s at least working on some level, so as another correspondent urged me to do, I am seeing it again. I’m not the only critic to do so — I see that Susannah Clapp also went back for a second look, writing in her Observer review, “this play about having more than one person in your skin put me so much in two minds that I went back for a second shot.” Grappling with the difficulties of writing about it, she said, “The project is important: what, after all, is the point of going to the theatre if what’s on offer can be summarised in print?”
Indeed, the theatre is about much more than what’s on the page; it’s an experiential artform, not a purely literary exercise. And so, of course, is opera, with the ability of music to make the kind of emotional connections that transcend mere language. Seeing Philip Glass’s 1980 opera, Satyagraha, receiving its British premiere at London Coliseum, is all about the experience of living in the hypnotic moments of its performance – there is no narrative or linguistic anchor here at all to hold onto, but instead it offers a series of non-linear statements about Gandhi’s pact of non-violent protest, sung in ancient Sanskrit, accompanied by Glass’s mesmerising, meditative musical repetitions.
It’s fascinating how opera, historically a conservative art form, should produce such a glistening piece of highly inventive and challenging theatre making. I loved it so much that I went back to see it again a second time on the weekend – again, buying a ticket this time for the privilege! It was wonderful to see how a company like English National Opera are embracing new kinds of working. Here, they entrusted the opera’s physical realisation to the wonderful team of director Phelim McDermott and designer/associate director Julian Crouch of the fringe theatre company Improbable, and the results were as theatrically thrilling as they were musically magnificent.
But then ENO, despite the managerial and funding difficulties that have blighted its running over the last few years, does seem to have the exhilarating confidence to experiment with form and make the kind of inspired directorial choices that have led to some of Britain’s most innovative theatre creators working there. In 2005, Richard Jones did a stunning production of an opera that set Fassbinder’s screenplay to The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant to music that was one of the best shows I saw all year. David McVicar, who recently staged Handel’s Agrippina there, is another fine director who works too little nowadays in legitimate theatre – but clearly he and Jones are being stretched and challenged enough in the opera house. And so are opera audiences.
