I thought this was a terrific production. It was innovative and required a technical perfection.
The story centres upon a rather geeky young man who invents a robot named Golem. Golem takes care of much routine until one day it ceases to function; it has been superceded by Golem II. This is an altogether slicker proposition and the self-updating and general loss of control perfectly resonates with my experience of Windows.
The original golem is a rather homely clay automaton with a dangly penis; the mark 2 version is much miniaturised and machine-like. From helping out these machines rapidly start to help themselves, golem (1) setting the trend by staying up at night and watching TV.
There is a lot of animation and the cleverness of the Company is for the humans to merge and perfect their timing with the animation. If done badly, one felt it would be a shambles; as it was it was stunning.
Accompanied by live music, the show infused an energy and pace that kept the storyline bowling along. The Guardian was slightly sniffy about it; the Observer less so. I can see Michael Billington's point - my lasting memory is of the two Golems and a lot of the rest rather fades into the background. On the other hand, I just found it such a brilliant night of theatre.
No comments:
Post a Comment