A chamber of horrors
A
welcome return of Brian Lipson’s multi-layered theatrical
extravaganza. His one man show that sets out to be a piece about
the 19th century social-scientist Francis Galton but which turns
into and fantasia on the nature of theatrical performance is as
funny as it is fascinating. Galton is best remembered as the founder
of Eugenics. In his time (the second half of the 19th century,
Galton died in 1911, the same year as that other great English
satirist W.S. Gilbert) his theories were considered cranky like
Phrenology and all those other pseudo-sciences. Only the connection
made between his Eugenics and the disasters that were caused and
still loom where 'selective breeding' is mentioned.
As mentioned, Lipson's theatre piece uses the pretext
of an autobiographical monologue to springboard into a greater
exploration of theatre and its origins, psychology and philosophy.
Beginning with the ingenious set. Taking the ambiguity of the
stage within a stage, the set is like a Victorian era curio cabinet
crossed with a hansom cab shorn of its wheels, horse and driver.
In it sits Lipson, made up and costumed like Galton and again
threatening the comfortable theatre convention as he silently
surveys the audience waiting for an appropriate moment to begin.
When he does it is an absurd routine involving him improvising
an experiment with socks, braces, umbrella and the various bits
and pieces that adorn his cabinet. These continue throughout the
work, Galton reduced everything to a measurable system, making
tea, evaluating how and why a woman is pretty and how the undesirable
in humankind can be bred out. Lipson by now is so familiar with
his text that he can deliver it in any way, turning technical
hitches into extra coups and involving the most recalcitrant audience
members int providing assistance.
Eventually the legacy of Galton's eugenics theories
turn the piece around. The dotty old prof becomes enraged that
he is being misrepresented by low comic actor and begins to strip
the illusion away. Normally the actor strips away the make up
to reveal the actor beneath. Galton strips away the actor by removing
the actor by way of the false hair and make up insisting that
the man underneath is the character. If it were not so funny and
Lipson were not so engrossing in control of this bizarre concept
it would be an exercise in theatre of cruelty.
One of the few theatre pieces like Antechamber
that I know of is Luciano Berio's Recital I (for Cathy).
In that Berio deconstructs a vocal recital where the singer arrives
on stage and, frustrated by the non-appearance of her pianist,
attempts to give the recital which meanders through musical and
political references with the singer performing as an actor impersonating
a distressed singer, attempting to communicate her difficulties
with orchestra and the audience. Written in 1971 it is politically
influenced, the anarchy of the work being symbolic in itself.
Lipson’s monologue is obviously not so general
in its political message as Berio's. The ugly legacy of Galton's
experiments, however, is as hard-hitting as the anarchy towards
the end of the work, where Lipson angrily sheds his make up and
costume, not as an actor abandoning the performance but as the
person he is playing abandoning the actor. This is not menacing.
It should be perhaps but Lipson is just too enjoyable to menace.
Michael Magnusson
To read more of Michael Mangusson's theatre reviews,
check out his blog at
On Stage (and walls) Melbourne.
