Death and The Critic

While I devoutly hope that this isn’t God giving me a warning, I’ve seen a great deal of death in the theatre lately. First of all, Via Negativa’s Four Deaths slaughtered stars of alternative performance. Then English National Ballet’s Giselle saw the heroine and her unwanted admirer take the long walk. Finally Jo Clifford dressed Mr Bones up in a smart suit. If I wanted to push it, I’d add in Cat Aclysmic’s devil routine- well, it’s theological- Julia Bardsley’s take on Revelations, Yann Marrussich at NRLA (if being buried arse-deep in broken glass counts as hell) and all those performers who die, metaphorically, on stage every weekend.

Jo Clifford recently pointed out that “our biggest fear is the fear of death”, and while I might just be lucky in worrying more about the landlord coming round, death does loom in the theatrical imagination. I am reminded of William Burroughs’ sardonic comment on God, desperately trying to generate energy in a static universe: at the least, death gives a bit of tragedy.  But in all of the recent shows, death has offered redemption: a resolution that neither my landlord nor I are likely to experience any time soon.

Take Giselle. In an otherwise limp production- the ENO seem to struggle to find male dancers who can act- her death at the end of Act One is one of the most powerful reminders of why I love ballet. Spotting her beloved embracing his fiancée, Giselle rages, then falls. When she gets up again, she is already dead, and her final dance, shot through with moments from the earlier erotic pas de deux, are the desperate twitching of a dying body and a terrified mind observing its own dissolution. It’s a rare , horrifying moment, when the tutus and mime fall away and choreography demonstrates its superiority to mere words. Giselle’s death is tragic, tormented. In Act Two, her ghost rescues her beloved from his deserved punishment, suggesting that love is greater than death. When they invented ballet, the Jesuits must have been hoping for this explicit portrayal of Grace.

And so Four Deaths- they killed off Bausch and La Ribot, while making me far more excited about their art, and transformed the deaths into natural culminations of creative lives, well led. Even Clifford’s Every One sought to prove how one death can make a social difference- and without it being some dramatic martyrdom.

As Clifford’s Mr Death points out, the traditional religious responses to death have been abandoned. We don’t visit churches to be reminded of our mortality, or meditate on our end through Zazen or the Hail Mary. And it’s a cliché to comment on how we hide death away these days, in sober funeral parlours and clinical wards. It’s natural that art is going to jump into the gap- what else do I use to fill up the void? Besides, when the economic collapse comes, death is a communal experience that we face alone and is surer than taxes.

So, I am constantly being invited to think about death. It probably accounts for my cheery demeanour and inventions of crises, to distract myself from the urgent question: what does life mean, if it doesn’t last? This might be a profoundly religious question, and theatre could be occupying the space predicted by German romantic poets: a new religion, or a reiteration of old religion, or the ancient religion making a comeback.

Being unable to resist a spot of post-modern pretention, I enjoyed a poster at the NRLA, which quoted Derrida. He roundly lambasted theatre for being “theological” in having a director’s vision behind the show. I think that Derrida was using the word “theology” to mean “following the systematic theology of monotheism”, and I am fascinated by the idea that theatre criticism could be another form of worship. In that case, I sure as hell know who my goddess is.