18 – 22 October
Never was the story of the classical Greek heroes and villains better told. This is Homer on a good day, excited by his own storytelling, playing all the characters to an enthralled audience. It is Homer-as-Medusa relating the Trojan War and its aftermath by one who was there and with a handful of Greek myths thrown in for background. Medusa, the snake haired Gorgon, her movement colubrine, her gaze a weapon of immense power, teasing and flirting with the audience.
Ad Infinitum is a theatre company that values and brings to its audiences tirelessly honed skills and last night’s performance by Deb Pugh, directed by George Mann, is testimony to the rich theatrical fruit their approach produces. It is physical story telling at its zenith. Deb Pugh, with the abandon of a child alone in a room playing all the parts in a story of their own devising; jumping and twisting to face themselves as their own adversary; simultaneously the hunter and the prey, the victor and the defeated. Characters plucked from the surrounding dark, liquid air; a taut, haughty Achilles faces an implacable Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, equally proud and fearless, careless of her own life having killed her sister in a hunting accident. Or Cassandra, frenziedly attempting to be heard – by the Trojans, by Agammemnon about to be murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, who alone can hear her prophecies. Again Clytemnestra greeting her returning husband with deadpan irony, her revengeful plot chilling her blood.
In one way you could call this a dream job for an actor, ‘We want you to relate episodes from the Iliad and Greek mythology, playing all the parts yourself. And from the perspective of Medusa!’ But to do it, to pull it off in style, that takes talent, skill, experience. Ms Pugh goes at it with some purpose, this is the woman’s view of myth. It’s all done at a breathless gallop, abstracting herself from the story at times to comment in as it were, a down-to-earth, no nonsense, woman to audience, ‘what a shit bag’, kind of way.
Ali Hunter’s lighting showed us everything we needed to see and no more, leaving our imaginations to swirl around in the darkness whilst setting the mood. No less was the sound and music of Sam Halmarack.
Last night’s performance was co-narrated in BSL which to my surprise I never found distracting whilst occasionally enhancing the performance.
★★★★★ Graham Wyles, 21st October, 2022
Photo credit: Camilla Adams
