The Overcoat
Faust at the International Festival was showy and had moments of beauty: Gecko shows them how to do with ninety minutes of incredible, frenetic brilliance.
Aristotle had a point. The Overcoat's unity of plot powers this tragedy, focussing on the detail of a life lived in despair and failure. The restlessness of the production, which uses bodies as props, dance for dreams, and the factory as a symbol for a broken, disorientated universe, prevents it from ever becoming self-indulgent. The manipulation of the audience's emotions as the protagonist swings from failure to success then failure again gives The Overcoat the same tone as a Greek tragedy.
The plot is simple. A man chases a woman and success at work, represented by a lovely coat. He works hard but fails. He makes a deal with the devil and gets the coat. He is lifted up: she loves him. But what are the consequences of his decision?
The Faust myth is beating at the heart of this all-out physical theatre: the scenes of drudgery are perfectly realised, the thwarted desire between the hero and his beloved caught in subtle nuances of gesture. All of the performances are relentless and dynamic, the set gorgeously atmospheric and dank, the pace ferocious.
Without an intelligible script, refusing to settle in a single genre, The Overcoat is an incredible experiment in theatrical possibility that uses sophisticated style to provoke profound emotions. Stunning.