The angel of death in a bowler hat, a man and a woman on a roof creating an old mans life from his dying face or a dog who speaks to his therapist. These are only a few of the strange and wonderful scenes you will see during their chance interweaving in The Exquisite Corpse, a piece which could be called the Talking Heads of the 21st Century.
In The Exquisite Corpse we see 5 writers and actors weaving together 15 short scenes into a unique sequence of experience. It is truly one of the slickest productions I have seen for a long time. Each of the change over sequences have been as well thought through as the scenes and the variations in tempo, music, look and feel is breathtaking.
Layers upon layers of production mean that nothing is presented as purely practical, the set tape marking the floor forms a beautiful geometric multi-coloured pattern and the coat stands provided for each of the actors costumes are a constant reminder of the immediacy and unpredictability of the scene order during each show. These frame the stage and form isolated bays for each performer, they are strangely beautiful and have echoes of the uncertainty about the future and the need to be constantly armed with our costumes in preparation for any situation which may occur or role we may have to take on which we all experience in life.
Easily matching the professional level in production within this show is the acting quality. In a 5 strong cast there is no weak link as scene after scene each actor impresses with emotional rawness and believability in the face of broken character narratives. The word ensemble could have been created for them and you feel you are in safe hands with performers who will always truthfully tell each characters story no matter in what order they are told.
It is an unavoidable point however that something is missing from this production. In the interest of removing the beginning from the end or middle it is hard to get a real sense of any of the stories which have been told. You will come out with 15 skewered versions of each tale and however used we are, in our MTV generation, to deconstructing and collating information it is still impossible to get a fully round picture of each isolated tale told.
Today we saw 3, 7, 13,14, 9, 11, 10, 8, 4, 2, 12, 6, 5,1 and 15, tomorrow you may see one of 6 million possible combinations but what will always be guaranteed is a slick and vivid production which fully represents the segmented tapestry of our Postmodern world.
