SIGNAL TO NOISE -FORCED ENTERTAINMENT @ The Junction
Is this a fake review? Am I not Mike Levy but an AI generated avatar-scribe? Can we trust anything we see or hear and has the world got even madder? How do we make sense of the senseless? Well trust Forced Entertainment to have a really good bash.
The world-renowned troupe came The Junction fresh from gigs at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and wowing the crowds at the Dublin Festival. We were in the presence of edgy theatre royalty. The company was created in Sheffield 40 years ago by writer, director and musician Tim Etchells. He is still firmly at the helm – and so are much of his regular cast. Etchells is the Tim Minchin of theatre for adults (is there something about ‘Tim’?). He composed the frenetic underscore and devised a madcap show that defies easy categorization.
The issue of fakeness – alternative truth – is addressed head on by six performers, rows of costumes, silly clownish wigs and a stage full of office chairs, Formica tables and ersatz pot plants. Their voices are not their own – but lip-synced language apparently generated by AI. We begin as at a drama rehearsal – each actor wants to know: ‘Is this microphone on?’ ‘Can you hear me?’ Their voices are voice-overs, and the questions are repeated not six but countless times. As they ‘speak’ the jumble of a set is constantly being changed – plants planted on a rug, or by a table – deposited and then removed in a frenzied ballet of stage management. But what show are they managing? Is there a show at all? Illusion and reality. This opening sets the tone for the 90-minute performance. Actors repeating mimed sentences – passing the verbal baton from one to another where another has just changed into a frock, a dressing gown, a glittery jacket.
We the audience are teased into thinking that the loopy looping will cease and something – a narrative, a play even, might soon begin. But of course, it never does. What we get is chatter, patter, half-finished jokes and breathless scenery changes that never gets anywhere. There are moments of relative calm even introspection. But these are short lived as the crazed repetitions often reach Dial 11.
The performances are outstanding and there are echoes here of Pina Bausch’s kooky choreography. The delivery of the lip-synced snippets often gets hyper with rhythmic music to underline the lunacy. The whole thing is stuffed full of Shared Experience’s trademark energy, manic humour and nightmarish visions.
All this said, 90 minutes is an awfully long time to watch endless repeats – not even Fawlty Towers could take that punishment. I found the piece fascinating, often funny but frankly exhausting. The point about AI’s onward march – the issues of what is and what isn’t real was brilliantly made – but I just wish it could have been made in half the time. And that sentiment is real. You can rely on that. Or can you?
