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30 THE NEW REVIEW | 01. 1 0. 17 | The Observer

If I were a casting director, I would
put Thalissa Teixeira at the top of my
list of new names. I fi rst saw her last
year at Manchester’s Royal Exchange ,
captivating as an exploited beauty in
The Night Watch. I was bowled over
by her diff erent dazzle as a savvy PA
in Yerma. She is 24. The catch in her
voice and her ease of gesture almost
disguise the blaze of her attention. In
Th e Unknown Island you could pretty
much deduce the action by watching
her eyes. She is lit up from top to toe.
This is Ellen McDougall ’s fi rst
production as artistic director of the
Gate. It is a remarkable success –
against some odds. McDougall and
Clare Slater have adapted a short
story by the Portuguese writer José
Saramago. Told in the manner of a
fairytale, it speaks of new starts, new
love and the need for human beings to
face out towards the world. It features
an obstructive king, a man who wants
to set sail in search of an unknown
island, and a cleaning woman who
goes through the Door of Decisions
to join him on a dark sea. This could
easily have become a static, fi nger-
wagging allegory. What takes place
on stage is not so much action as

narration. But, oh, what an imaginative

production can do.

Rosie Elnile’s design encloses the

theatre in a bubble of blue. Both actors

and the audience, seated around the

stage close up to the performers, are

surrounded by walls of turquoise,

like stilled waves. In front of them

sits a miniature galleon. It is red, the

only other colour on stage. The cast

are head to foot in shades of scarlet,

vermilion, crimson. Four actors take

turns at the narrative, men and women

speaking, apparently randomly,

female and male parts. Jon Foster and

Zubin Varla are beautifully fl exible.

Hannah Ringham, whom I’ve had

occasion to admire at Shunt and in

other unorthodox theatre, brings her

extraordinary quality to the stage. She

is still, composed, often sardonic – then

breaks into comic swagger, posing with

tricorn hat and upturned lip.

Eff ects are playful. A shower of rain

is administered from a watering can.

Balloon ducks and rabbits are sent

bouncing across the boards. Yet there is

also what amounts to an extraordinary,

casual communion. The actors break

out of character and, chatting, share

the ship’s rations – bread, wine and

olives – with the audience. It is a

demonstration of the play’s creed : “If

you don’t step outside yourself you’ll

never discover who you are. ” As is the

lovely closing moment when, high

above the stage, a small window clicks

open – and gives us a glimpse of the

world beyond the theatre.

Visceral uncertainty rendered with

Scandinavian good taste. Miasma

made explicit. Ivo van Hove’s latest

re inventions of movies for the stage –

the last of his Toneelgroep Amsterdam

shows at the Barbican – are of

thunderous Ing mar Bergman fi lms.

After the Rehearsal and Persona both

have actors as central characters , and

dissolving identity as their theme.

Van Hove translates them

with moody beauty. Designer Jan

Versweyveld creates an astonishing

series of pictures in Persona, capsizing

a concrete box into a shimmer of lake

and sky, which his lighting turns grey,

tangerine and faint sea-green. The shifts

are so tactful that it’s hard to believe an

interior designer is not squinting at a

colour chart. At a pitch-black moment

in a psychiatric encounter, the song

Happiness blares out from a nurse’s

record player. A young actress speaks of

daily life impinging on her acting, and of

performance strangling spontaneity off -

stage: while the right eye cries, the left

eye “watches the eff ect ”. As she talks,

her image appears on a screen: neatly

caught between fl esh and fi lm.

All is visually memorable – and

very clearly managed. For accounts

of disintegrating personalities, these

An enthralling life on the ocean wave

Th ere is talk of chasms,

reality and fakeness in

Persona but a sense of

danger is aestheticised

out of existence

A dazzling new star and a vivid production makes Th e Unknown Island well worth setting sail for

For Love or Money

Victoria Dock, Hull; until 8 Oct

Th eatre company Slung Low takes

audiences to real-world sites and there

connects them, via headphones, with a live

action that may also be interspliced with

video projections. Previously, the company

has hunted Moby-Dick in Leeds , raised

a riot in Sheffi eld and recreated the fi rst

world war in York. Over the past year, under

its artistic director, Alan Lane , it has been

fl oating the story of a world-engulfi ng fl ood

in Hull (a site-specifi c irony in this much-

fl ooded city). In Flood , working with writer

James Phillips , Lane takes the company’s

technology-mediated, live-action mix

further than before, creating one piece

from a confl uence of four live and small-

screen performances ( this week’s omnibus

break apart, helicopter blades whirr. Th e

fl ood arrives. Is Gloriana a supernatural

agent of salvation or destruction?

Part three (broadcast on BBC2 last

August ) introduces the post-fl ood world

and part four (live) develops it. Th re e

platforms fl oating on the dark dock

represent three new societies: Holy Island

(followers of the vanished Gloriana);

Renaissance Island (led by the politician,

who will “make things as before”); and

Albion (violently authoritarian, where

anyone who mentions Gloriana is put to

death). Gloriana’s return precipitates a

crisis, a battle, a resolution.

Th e logistics are extraordinary, but

Phillips’s text drowns a potentially

interesting, simple parable for today in a

deluge of words. Nothing is done that is

not described. Actors do not develop

relationships, they interior-monologue

them. If the overall eff ect is disappointing,

compensations include the glorious

setting, some visual eff ects and Heather

Fenoughty ’s emotionally textured music.

Clare Brennan

event off ers parts two to four in one day).

Part one (at fl ood.hull2017.co.uk) , fi lmed

on a fi shing boat in the North Sea, sets up

the story: two fi shermen, father and son,

haul a net containing 100 orange life jackets

and a naked girl from a depth of 70m.

Revived, the girl remembers nothing of her

past; letters newly tattooed on her fi ngers

spell “Gloriana”.

Part two is live (and available as

podcasts on the same website ). Th e sun

is setting beyond Victoria Dock; the action

takes place on fl oating platforms. Gloriana

is delivered to a detention centre in the

City by the Sea. Her story intertwines with

others: the father and son (fi shermen or

people-smugglers?); escaped migrants;

a reviled politician and her disaff ected

daughter. To the audience, shivering

on the dockside, fi gures appear small

and distant. Lights guide our attention

to actors whose disconnected voices

sound in our ears. Th e complicated plot

concludes in spectacular catastrophe.

Water spumes and lights fl are against

the now darkened sky; platforms

Above, Hannah

Ringham in Th e

Unknown Island.

Photograph by

Cameron Slater

Right, Marieke

Heebink and Gijs

Scholten van

Aschat in After

the Rehearsal.

Tristram Kenton

Nadia Emam as the

mysterious Gloriana

in Flood at Victoria

Docks, Hull.

Malcolm Johnson

A good parable,

sadly submerged

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London WC2 ;

until 2 Dec

Th e Unknown Island
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After the Rehearsal/Persona
Barbican, London EC2

Susannah

Clapp

@susannahclapp

are tidy plays. Which move with

glacial slowness, especially if you are

not a Dutch speaker: three hours in,

surtitles lose their charm. There is

talk of chasms, reality and fakeness

but – despite phenomenal, raging

performances in both productions

by Marieke Heebink and Gaite

Jansen – any sense of danger is

aestheticised out of existence. And the

clinical procedure is itself bonkers,

manipulatively plaintive. A woman in

distress (the stage clich e for madness

is knickers only) is sent away with a

nurse. To a “desolate ” island. Why not

to one that might cheer her up?

Who’d have thought that David

Mitchell was a Goveist? But last week

he was beating the anti-expert drum

in response to BBC2’s new version of

Radio 4’s Front Row. Theatre criticism

should not be the preserve “of those

who know what they’re talking about”.

Does that stricture apply to writing

about painting, music and food? What

does Front Row co-presenter Giles

Coren say? Myself, I’m not keen on

abolishing critics. But then: I would say

that wouldn’t I?

Actually I agree with much of what

Mitchell and the Front Rowers say.

More comfortable seats? I don’t like

having a squashed bottom. Lavatories?

Try being a women in the, er, stalls. The

Globe? One of my favourite theatres,

too. And these chaps avoided the usual

approach to theatre-bashing. Practically

every year a columnist tries to make a

splash by announcing that he/she hates

the theatre. And does so by suggesting

that they are courageously going against

the fl ow. The supposed anti-orthodoxy

is the new orthodoxy.

I want to biff David Mitchell only

about his reference to “the theatre

world”. As if homogeneous fusties

were lining up against the more

nimble-minded Giles Corens. I want to

challenge Front Row’s Nikki Bedi only

on two comments. She says she prefers

movies to plays: fi ne – but the arts

aren’t an X Factor genre competition.

She says she likes “tight, fast-paced

creative theatre” , implying that the

“theatre world” prefers the saggy, slow,

eehigh. unimaginative kind. I don’t.

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