It’s been some time since I saw a site specific theatre item staged over several floors of a non theatrical building. Perhaps the last time was the Adelaide Fringe, almost 30 years ago, when there were empty warehouses in the square mile of that city’s centre. WHEN NIGHT COMES uses three floors, seven rooms and the staircase (and street outside) of the Union Bond Store building at the Rocks in its expression of the five senses. The old sandstone walls, and wooden beams and staircase were on display, without doubt adding ambience to the separate sensory staging of each room and scene of this hour long work.
For a Fringe show WHEN NIGHT COMES displayed a serious investment in design and lighting, working around constraints of the heritage building. Each scene was arresting, with divergent acting and choreography on display. Extracts from Shakespeare and Edgar Alan Poe were included, along with numerous vernacular snippets often lascivious and melodramatic in style. More use of poetry ‘of the ages’, organised around the sensory concepts, could have further enhanced the allure made possible by the clever conceptualisation of this show, and fulfill its rich promises and tags, such as to ‘ignite the imagination’ and ‘transform’. Without a rich verbal text the understanding and dramatisation of pleasure and desire can be limited.
There were five performers, three women and two men, cunningly organised so that another audience could commence its journey through the scene installation while a preceding one was still viewing the sixty five minute spectacle. The producers compensate for the small size of each audience (15-20) by providing for six or more showings each night. The audience was also required to wear a robe and an eyemask to join the secret society of delights they will encounter – a lot of fun.
The audience is offered three cocktails (or mocktails) in the course of the show (as well as perfume and some concentrated liquid sprayed into the mount (not sure about the etiquette of that action). The cocktails were delicious, even if the ingredients were not stated.
In its creative team the show was very well, indeed impressively, resourced, with producer and directors (Kirsten Siddle co-director and creator, Scott Maidment co-director and previous founder of Adelaide’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Mike Finch co-director and previous director of Circus Oz, and Helen Cassidy co-writer) who have considerable, indeed impressive, past experience relevant to this type of show.
The performers were quite up to task for a show of this nature as a typical Fringe offering. Meg Hickey was outstanding as the Euterpre character bringing comic acting, opera quality singing, and movement in a spellbinding piece. Gabby Carbon played Nerfertum is an intense drug infused scene (assuming one in the mood of a homage to drugged states). The concluding threesome, featuring Hannah Raven as sultry unclad witch like Thea, was also compelling, aided by a truly evocative and grand design. The design and function of the long table at the end was a welcome ending. In its second half, the show was more composed and detached from the audience, even when featuring interaction, and this enhanced its potential aesthetic and theatrical appeal. Andrew Waldin was capable but also a little constrained, as master of ceremonies, by limitations of the script and direction in the opening scenes, and Cyrus Henry was playful but finally overdone as Pan.
The show definitely has adventurous, arresting qualities.
I saw the performance that took place on the 27th August.
A Broad Encounters and Sydney Fringe production, WHEN NIGHT COMES is playing the Sideshow at the Rocks, Union Bond Store until the 18th October. Check the website for performance dates.
