National Review, Day 4

“I’ve read so much about them.” “They are on my course’s essential reading.” “I can’t wait to see Forced Entertainment, my lecturer is obsessed with them.”

By the weekend, The NRLA fills up with students from across the country.  In the evening, we are moving south to Tramway, where the legendary Tramway 1, home of the Peter Brook Wall, hosts the legendary Forced Entertainment.

After last night, they are now “the over-rated Forced Entertainment.”

My first Forced Entertainment was Bloody Mess, a show that set the bar so high that only gymnastic contemporary dance can clear it. A collection of apparently random characters wandered around the stage, their preoccupations and monologues almost accidently weaving together towards a bleak finale that cast new light on both the possibilities of theatre and the nature of social behaviour.  Since then, I’ll always rush to see them, even though I am fully aware that there is a good chance that they’ll turn in something like last night’s Void Story, a mediocre nihilistic romp.

Set up as a radio play, with a disappointing slide show- images in that montage style that is the fall-back of any avant-garde artist trying to signpost their experimental lineage- Void Story is a vaguely humorous sadism, pushing a couple through a series of torments. They get shot, chased by a bear, lose their house, their possessions, travel through a dystopian landscape, are manipulated by a child, dance until time dissolves, meet erotic ghosts, never sleeping, never eating, before finally being bombed.

That the slide show offers little to the text is disappointing: the script could easily handle the story. The veneer of hip wit and immaculate presentation hides an adolescent nihilism, worn better by teenage Goths than a company who are capable of blowing minds. It’s a lazy fall-back: when compared to Charlie Montgomery’s favourites, Forkbeard Fantasy, it is self-regarding and dour.

Fortunately, the earlier events at The Arches were more nourishing. Monali Meher took a staple of Live Art,  fake blood, and scrubbed it, In Determination. Enriched by the bleed from other shows in neighbouring Arches, she became an eloquent symbol for the aftermath of violence, constantly cleaning but never rubbing the red away, her clothes drenched and stained and the blood still flowing. Her simple action more resonant, more evocative, than any amount of talk and choreography.

Downstairs, Michael Mayhew had decked out his room with balloons, most of which came home with me and are now floating around my bedroom, in a stunningly simple, but beautiful conclusion to his epic endurance piece. At around the same time, Marcia Farquhar was concluding her thirty hour monologue. Her sleeplessness was wearing her down, turning her funny anecdotes into rambling discourses: losing words, forgetting her point, before finally working towards the brilliant punch lines.  It might have been sold as Live Art, but Farquhar could teach most stand-ups about timing, self-awareness and compassion.  The impact of her extended action on her speech only added to the idiosyncratic charm.

The surprising conclusion: the events most obviously labelled as “Live Art” are more immediate, more focussed than the recognisable structures of Forced Entertainment.