Review: Kellerman
April 23, 2009
Date reviewed: 22 April 2009
Venue: West Yorkshire Playhouse
With Kellerman, Leeds company imitating the dog, along with serial collaborator Pete Brooks, tackles the achingly cool theme of time travel. It’s usually seen more as a haunt of filmmakers than theatre companies, but this is consistent with itd’s style, which sews live performance to film and animation.
Kellerman is set during World War Two and, reassuringly, its protagonist (Adam Nash/Simon Wainwright) is a traumatised and supposedly delusional physicist. He’s so distressed and confused, in fact, that he often runs through the corridors of the hospital in which he is sectioned contemplating advanced physics and recollecting conversations with his sinister psychiatrist (Tony Guilfoyle). Indeed, his arrival there, as far as he remembers, was achieved via an au naturel jog through the unforgiving vegetation nearby, which is considerately replicated for the audience. The conversations with the psychiatrist, who marries Bob Geldof’s accent and vocabulary to a voice like Anthony Hopkins’, are heated, and the sort of suspension of disbelief needed to accept that a mental illness professional should be so furious at a patient for, er, suffering delusions would involve a crane.
In any case, they form one of three ongoing plotlines (if anything so emphatically un-linear can be called a line). Another consists of exchanges between three nurses (Alice Booth, Anna Wilson and Laura Atherton) in the hospital, one of whom is suspected of having attended to Kellerman too conscientiously when she falls pregnant (hardly a surprising inference given the amount of dialogue that his appendage occasions when he arrives). The third is a series of conversations between Kellerman and a woman (Morven Macbeth) who, after unexpectedly appearing in his bed, instructs him to meet her in a café in Covent Garden in 1720 (an instruction that leaves him puzzled but unfazed).
Though patently designed to be nuanced, intellectual tiptoeing, the writing is hackneyed marching. So much wordage is expended in constructing a convoluted plot that the characterisation is skeletal: no two characters appear to develop any kind of relationship beyond what’s essential to the plot and the same goes for recollections about their personal histories. They also have a habit of talking in cringe-nourishing film cliché: “It’s always been about you, Harry”; “You’re fucking insane, Harry”; “I just didn’t want you to get hurt”; “None of it is real”. Consequently, although I’m curious about how the cloudy story fits together, my emotions remain untapped. It’s rather like watching Lemmings fall into a molten pit.
The use of film and sound shows promise but ultimately lacks imagination and variety. While, in the early going, the projection of mottled, animated impressions of the characters’ faces as they talk and use of amplified dialogue are stylish, they soon begin to choke the drama. Similarly, the intermittent use of a high-pitched, synthesised ringing that reminds me of ‘Doctor Who’ to indicate tension feels too slick and computerised.
Laura Hopkins’ two-storey set, however, contributes much. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the hospital is evoked by its squeezing and compartmentalisation of the stage. It permits smooth transitions between scenes and gives precision to Simon Wainwright’s projections.
Kellerman highlights some integral elements of theatre by not achieving them. Its main focus is not on the quality of performances and writing, and it exudes little of the sparkle of theatre because much of it isn’t live. Oh, and if you want to see a delicate, thought-provoking story about time travel, rent Donnie Darko.
-Simon Walker
Comments
4 Responses to “Review: Kellerman”
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Obviously I am lacking the intellectual reach of the reviewer but I found the whole production to be rivetting and a rewarding follow up to Hotel Methuselah. Straightforward linear narrative can be found on Yorkshire stages any day of the week and this was different and edgy enough to justify its inclusion in the Northern Exposure series.
Donny Darko - delicate and thought-provoking, really! I think you’ve just surrenderd your reviewing credentials in one throwaway remark.
It isn’t a throwaway remark: I don’t make throwaway remarks. In any case, I can’t see why saying that I do (or don’t) like something is tantamount to throwing away my reviewing credentials. God forbid that a reviewer should do something as indiscreet as voice an opinion. Also, if you’re going to attempt that put-down, you really should learn to spell “surrendered”.
I take your point about chopping up the narrative being worthwhile in the sense that it’s unusual. It’s just that in this play it’s not done very well - it’s difficult to understand what’s happening or to see how the storytelling benefits from the narrative being assembled in the way it is.
Also, I find it deeply ironic that you make remarks about my “intellectual reach”, since you’re defending a play sufficiently self-indulgent that it appeared to alienate most of the audience of which I was a member.
I saw this play at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and I must admit that visually I really enjoyed it. I have to agree with Simon’s comments though as I found it far too complex and felt my mind wandering with a lot of the psychiatrist/ patient dialogue and also the 1920’s nurses conversations were very grating at times.
I loved the animation and the set but didn’t really understand the plot- I felt it may be a bit of “emperors new clothes” and I was stupid not to get it!!. I left the building with lots to discuss with my theatre date which ultimately that is what its all’s about!
Certainly those I’ve spoken to who enjoyed it have highlighted the visual aspects. While I wouldn’t say that these aren’t good, I’d question whether they work alongside theatre.
As far as the plot goes, I think that they were probably aiming to make people feel stupid, which was one of the things to which I took a dislike. This compares unfavourably with the North East Theatre Consortium’s excellent show ‘Queen Bee’, which has lots of subtle and playful ambiguity that it’s enjoyable to think about (as opposed to giving the impression that there’s a single, definite series of events going on but you’re too dim to compute what it is).
As you imply, though, no evening out at the theatre is complete unless you want to talk about the show afterwards.