Three Sisters — Salon Uporabnih Umetnosti. Not ironic blackface. Not deconstructed blackface. No further review possible. One interval. Ondine — SNG, Maribor. The performers are dressed in rehearsal blacks, with their hair tied back as if ready for wigs. And looks like they might be asleep. I hadn't remembered what the full title of the show was.
And suddenly I was in a different critical universe. Suddenly, also, the set made complete sense to me. At the same time, it gave me a whole unwelcome extra set of tools with which to assess the performance Which is genius. But with the knowledge of what the script is, one could immediately bring too much interpretation to bear.
The music is very nice. The lighting is very nice. The performances are very good. The atmosphere is very relaxed. And, in a way, this is a perfect Festival Show. Fascinating, open, sorbet-like. In theory, the dances here could have been anything, and certainly could have demanded infinitely more attention; but there was something wonderful about the laissez-faire gentle quality.
So, is it elitist? Even if only a dedicated philistine could deny that it was an interesting experiment. Totally legible, almost fully acted, and just incredibly touching. Attention completely grabbed. Do you? Hunger — SNG, Maribor. With added string trio and piano. Slovenian town where the townsfolk grumble that nothing ever happens. The clanging irony, of course, is that there is lots going on underneath the surface think Blue Velvet.
A young woman returns home and tries to murder the man who raped her as a child. A couple of other things happen. As stagings go, well, it looks lovely. The artfully empty-by-not-empty stage is perfectly lit — a scaff. The comic blah sits uncomfortably with the story of a girl who was repeatedly raped in her youth.
