THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER AND THE TRIAL An extremely talented Year 13 cohort had us hooked from the downbeat with their slick, fast-paced and razor-sharp execution of Berkovian technique, writes Kathryn Norton-Smith A-LEVEL BERKOFF
T he Year 13 examination showcase of two works, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Trial , performed in the non-naturalistic style of Steven Berkoff, evidenced performance and production work of the highest dramatic order. The complex metaphor of a crumbling house echoing the damaged and disintegrating sanity of its owner in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher was tackled head on and with brilliant inventiveness, with the actors morphing from playing characters, to emotions, to the crumbling house itself. The ensemble of Tai Barret-Hay, Eliot Edwards, Oscar Howley, Edmund Irving and Sam Izbicki demonstrated outstanding skill complemented by Niccoló Robertson’s deft direction, which was littered with expressionistic tropes to convey the parasitic relationship between the brother and sister and the gradual suffoca- tion of The Friend. The damaged fragile beauty implicit in the piece was enhanced by Freddie Greenwood’s dynam- ic lighting design, which echoed fragmentation with shards of flickering backlight, deep saturation of violet light and hand-held practicals to depict the infestation of moths. Berkoff’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial lays bare the dystopian vision of the individual dwarfed by the state and the nightmarish reality of rumour, misin- formation and alienation in our modern world. Inspired by the ‘image of perpetual running’, the piece opened with a heart-stopping physical depiction of a nightmarish maelstrom in Joseph K’s mind, foreshadowing his arrest, with a focus on the existential crisis of the individual battling with, and trying to escape, societal construct. The ensemble of Sonny Birrane, Max Constantinou, George Loynes, Jonny Millis and Shay Patel created a darkly comic kaleidoscopic vision of a world where nothing is as it seems, privacy has been abolished and Big Brother is always watching, skilfully integrating muscular ensemble playing, detailed mime and expressionistic choreographed sequences. Their slick manipulation of metal frames ensured they exploited every opportunity to frame the action and conjure shifting worlds, corridors and vortex- es, becoming an expressionistic extension of Joseph K in his downward spiral. Birrane played the everyman at the heart of the narrative, caught in an absurd bureaucratic world from which he is trying to escape, deftly capturing the character’s fracturing mental state and increasing confusion as he attempts to find a foothold in a world that is rapidly crumbling around him. ◎ The piece opened with a heart-stopping physical depiction of a nightmarish maelstrom in Joseph K’s mind
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THE ALLEYNIAN 711
DRAMA & DANCE
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