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At the Riverside
Studios,
Hammersmith, the Russian company Derevo are present- ing their show La Divina Commedia. The audience sit around a pitch black stage, until rays of light reveal fig ures perched aloft, looking like satanic versions of Mr Punch Then more darkness, followed by an irruption of fiends Two of them scourge a naked man as he swings from a tangle of ropes, with a cow bell tied to his scrotum they use rods tipped with tongues of fire There are shrill jungly noises, indistinct laughter and a persistent beat of drums No doubt about it, we are in the Inferno. The company consuls
of
two men and two women though masks and shaven heads often make them look like near clones They are mimes, who let their bodies speak for them as they weave their way through surreal transitions It's a form of dream theatre
for which there
has been a vogue in recent years anyone who has seen Theatre de Complicate or the work of Robert Lepage won't find them a complete novelty But their vision of hell still has its own scary power Then we move
on It is hard
to say where, but not, I think, to Purgatory, and certainly not to Paradise Instead we get a pond with unfolding water lilies, a drunken birth day party, a ballet scene which points up the contrast between front stage passions and backstage mooching. The visual tricks
have their
charm, and the ballet is very funny. But there is a slacken ing of intensity and it is only at the end that the show recaptures its full momen tum A pilgrim clambers through giant croquet hoops until he encounters a skele ton, a figure with golden ram's horns femes his way through the air, the final focus is on an hourglass Compelling stuff - but it s less Divine Comedy than danse macabre |
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Theatre
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Antony and Cleopatra
Hie Road to Ruin La Divina Commedia |
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