Vision/Aria

Dubbed as a meditation ‘on love, soul, obsession and electricity’, Vision/Aria is a bold (if not somewhat polemical) theatrical statement about the nature of romance and desire.

Based very loosely on Roland Barthe’s A Lover’s Discourse (fragments), the performance is just that…fragments of physical theatre, interspersed with a visceral vaudeville panache, and an array of surprising stunts thrown in to boot. As such, it would be imprudent to sit here and regurgitate the free-flow of events that occur.

Indeed, in the space of the hour and twenty minutes, the audience will be privy to both a screeching female rant carried out over the sound of Soft Cell’s familiar, Tainted Love, whilst other instances will find the performers silent and immobile, with little more than a violin underscoring their agonising emotions.

Hardly a conventional work Vision/Aria thrives on the absurd. There is a real sense here of conceptual exercise and an improvisational team spirit. Amongst these, special note goes to Stefanie Ritch. Her uninhibited performance is stirring, but unfortunately also has the habit of revealing the inherent weaknesses of her two co-stars, who aren’t nearly as magnetic.

However, the highlight of the piece is less about performance and more about concept. It takes place three-quarters of the way through the performance, when all of a sudden; the Changing House studio is turned into a virtual nightclub environment. It is here that the writer/director Flora Pitrolo makes her most significant statement; highlighting the painful and isolating sadness associated with modern day romance – the scene is a potent (if not heartbreaking) comment on the suffocating nature of ubiquitous pop culture.

Still, I left the theatre wishing that the entire work could have been as inspired. Without a doubt, many of the scenes are intriguing to watch, but fail to relate meaning because there isn’t the narrative thread to immediately draw the viewer into the story. As well, the piece was marred by perhaps one too many self-indulgent conversational exercises, with the beginning and the end in particular feeling like they existed as two parts of a separate whole.

But despite these failings, Vision/Aria is still worth seeing for its inspired ability to shock. Certainly, nothing beats the wicked trick mid-way through the show, which finds Ritch singing an A Cappella version of Blondie’s Call Me, in the most uncompromising circumstances.

-Omar Kholeif