Review Round-up: DV8’s dance polemic gets critics Talking

A piece of verbatim dance theatre, Can We Talk About This? tackles free speech and Islam, incorporating interview footage. At the National for a limited run to 28 March 2012, it covers controversial issues including militant Islam, Muslim extremism, Islamophobia, forced marriage and the promotion of multiculturalism.

Matt Trueman
Whatsonstage.com
★★★★★

“It’s a skilfully weaved case … DV8 maintain that multiculturalism stops short of cultural relativism … Lloyd Newson‘s production plunges headlong into this paradox with the wilful determination of someone forcing their hand into a food disposal unit. It was always going to be messy. He’s careful to distinguish between Islam and ‘some Muslims,’ but the absence of any other species of intolerance leaves the piece disconcertingly prone to manipulation and misunderstanding; a fact not helped by information overload … Verbatim texts hover above gorgeous choreography, almost dislocated from each other, but always balanced and integral … The best sequence shows Anne Cryer MP sensibly and carefully arguing against forced marriage … Kudos to the National for its continued efforts to make equal partners of theatre and verbatim texts, but the real credit belongs to DV8 for theatre that demands – requires – a second viewing. Theatre this potent, this outspoken and this courageous is rare. When it appears, it becomes absolutely necessary viewing.”

Andrzej Lukowski
Time Out
★★★★

“A polemical hammer blow only slightly softened by its playful dance theatre medium… DV8… steams into militant Islam and Muslim extremism with a cold fury that’ll knock the air from your lungs … The cumulative impact is searing and the message unequivocal: that in the wider political arena there is a double standard… and the reason for this lies in fear of violent reprisals. What distinguishes ‘Can We Talk About This?’ from more straightforward verbatim theatre is DV8’s astonishing physicality … There is an air of mischief and self-mockery to the performers … The real question preying on my woolly liberal mind: would somebody from the EDL or BNP enjoy this show? It’s doubtful: it wholeheartedly endorses a multi-faith, multi-ethnic society … There is no solving the challenges posed by a multi-faith society – or the white far right – if we can’t hold an honest discussion about them: Can We Talk About This is one hell of a conversation starter.”

Michael Billington
Guardian
★★★

“Newson’s highly expressive team of 10 performers catalogue a number of famous public incidents or ongoing injustices … It makes a horrifying list … And, much as I applaud a piece of physical theatre that deals with serious issues, the debate about multiculturalism is over-simplified. What is never explored is the idea that integration in some areas of life can be combined with preservation of one’s cultural and religious identity. As always with DV8, the physical side of the show is impressive: one female performer illustrates the determination to escape a forced marriage purely through sinuous hand and hip movements. But, intellectually, the show is full of holes. The idea that people are afraid to speak out about Islamist extremism is disproved by the very existence of this production at the National. And, while I wouldn’t call the show Islamophobic, it does nothing to enlighten us about the daily, non-violent practice of faith.”

Charles Spencer
Daily Telegraph
★★★★

“It says something about the timidity of our theatres and our dramatists that this daring debate about Islamic extremism, multiculturalism and freedom of speech is being presented by the dance and physical theatre company DV8, rather than by a more conventional stage outfit. There appears to have been an alarming amount of self-censorship by the theatrical establishment in tackling these issues … Great credit then to Newson for both conceiving and directing this production … The stylised movement that accompanies the play’s riveting verbal content adds almost nothing. One admires the performers’ ability to deliver their lines while jumping up and down … But the stylised movement actually serves as a distraction from the scary urgency of what is being said … Style and content seem risibly at odds. Nevertheless there is a coup-de-theatre that brings a sudden sense of palpable danger into the theatre and both the courage and the scrupulous research of this production are never in doubt.”

Paul Taylor
Independent

“Can We Talk About This? … should be subtitled Can We Dance About This? … The piece does not want to start a dialogue. Set in a generic community centre-cum-gym and moving chronologically from the case of Ray Honeyford… the evening is a tendentiously constructed tract posing as a dance-enhanced polemic … The dancing is sometimes a joy to watch … But when it’s not looking abitrary, there’s far too much glaring manipulativeness … There are fantastically difficult and important issues at stake here. They are dealt with in an undeniably powerful but also infuriatingly facile manner … There were moments as I watched the DV8 piece… when I fancied that this is what hell would be like: forced to be an eternal witness of a show that disqualifies itself as an adequate examination of considerations you ache to see clarified. There is a protest at one point by the most glaring ‘plant’ you have ever encountered in a theatre. Enough said.”

Clifford Bishop
Evening Standard
★★★★

“Lloyd Newson‘s latest piece of dance theatre is not just brave in the theatrical sense. It is, literally, courageous … As much as it is about liberal confusion or religious intolerance, Can We Talk About This? is about keeping record. The cast of 10 bring dozens of voices to life with remarkable power, considering how hard they also have to work on choreography that never stops weaving ironic patterns around the words. Joy Constantinides gives Shirley Williams arms like a doctored set of scales … Langolf, as Christopher Hitchens, turns a copy of the Satanic Verses into a flying dove to refute her … Even the darkest sections are beautiful. Christina May elegantly traces lines on her body while speaking the words of Ayaan Hirsi Ali … Respecting someone’s rights, Newson argues, is not necessarily the same as respecting their ideas. Anything worth saying will offend someone, somewhere. And choosing to keep silent is a betrayal of everyone who is denied a voice by another’s beliefs.”

Sarah Hemming
Financial Times
★★★★

“Even the title of this brave, urgent piece of dance theatre contains several implied interpretations at once … It’s challenging and subtle – apt for a piece that plunges headlong into one of the thorniest issues of our time … Throughout, the piece questions when multiculturalism becomes cultural relativism and what to do when tolerance ends up permitting intolerance … The style is as bold as the subject matter, with the words – all drawn verbatim from interviews or actuality – delivered by dancers on the move … The piece takes on a huge, significant and real problem and does so in a style that is in itself restless and challenging … Tackling a subject of such complexity does produce problems, however. You feel the limits of the piece: the lack of context, for example, of recent wars in the Middle East that inform extremist views … This is a daring, serious piece of theatre that suggests that, in fact, we have to talk about this.”

– McKenzie Kramer & Andrew Girvan