If ever a present deserved to be written about completely within the current tense, it’s the Gate’s Expensive Elizabeth. A love letter to the idea of stay theatre, the manufacturing is unapologetically quirky and alive, whereas nonetheless presenting a significant exploration of human kinship.
Conceptually bold, every night time, Expensive Elizabeth stars two totally different actors. Each them and the viewers have by no means seen or heard the script earlier than, and thus everybody within the room unravels the story of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell on the similar time. The 2 actors – on this night time Saffia Kavaz and Michelle Tiwo – enter and meet one another, earlier than studying letters they as actors have written to one another previous to the efficiency. On this method, the present blurs the road between actor and character proper from the beginning, making every little thing really feel all of the extra present and private. Tiwo’s Lowell is each assured and susceptible, particularly sizzling on the comedy beats of the piece, whereas Kavaz’ Bishop is quietly real. Because the night continues, the actors discover envelopes, postcards, and quite a lot of props that assist each them and us piece collectively the poets’ relationship, with the play taking up the type of a choreographed jigsaw puzzle.
Director Ellen McDougall makes the stage right into a youngsters’s playground for the actors to discover. It’s adorned with a velvet curtain that periodically rises to disclose props – the play incorporates small bushes, a yellow balloon, and an inflatable toucan, amongst many different issues. Between the 2 desks from which the actors learn, a sort of graveyard is created: relics of the poets’ friendship regularly accumulate as props are discarded. A very mesmerising visible second is when Tiwo’s Lowell seems beneath a bathe of gold glitter: the viewers pauses, transfixed by the stage magic of all of it.
The questions on the coronary heart of this piece are so fascinating: what makes theatre stay? To what extent are actors on stage nonetheless performing as themselves? How entitled are we to the main points of different folks’s lives? Whereas it positively sparks a spread of discussions, the present doesn’t at all times really feel prefer it dives deep sufficient in anyone route: an excessive amount of is up within the air. I like this manufacturing’s fearlessness a lot, however marvel what would have occurred had it focussed in on one explicit angle.
The character of ‘stay’ theatre has been broadly questioned over the previous 12 months, with the rise of on-line theatre, streamed performances, and radio performs. It’s refreshing to see one thing so undoubtedly stay and so separate from that debate. That is stay theatre in its most important type. The play additionally contributes to an ongoing dialog in regards to the function of the actor, particularly with regards to two-hander performs. Together with the Donmar’s multi-cast manufacturing of Constellations, we’re seeing theatre that centres on connection moderately than identification or superstar. What we witness in Expensive Elizabeth is a sort of kinship between poets and between actors, moderately than a love story in any conventional sense. In each reveals, the central relationship stays unchanged no matter who’s enjoying it.
In her poem The Armadillo, Bishop describes ‘a handful of intangible ash/with fastened, ignited eyes’; a picture which in some way sums up this manufacturing of Expensive Elizabeth completely. The poet’s letters, which may have felt firmly prior to now – intangible – are dropped at life – ignited – by the actors, the blocking, the sound and lighting. Theatre is created earlier than our very eyes.
Expensive Elizabeth performed at Theatro Technis till 18 September. For extra data, see the Gate web site.
