Citizens, Glasgow
Four stars
If you didn't know better, you could think this
evening was a single dose of the dazzlingly original Caryl Churchill
rather than a double bill. When Seagulls begins, you're still trying to process
the curious juxtapositions of Far Away as it switches back and forth from a
remote farmhouse to a hat-making workshop. It wouldn't be too great a stretch to
imagine the second play, about a woman with fading telekinetic powers, was
somehow related.
If they were related, the common theme would be
the place of art in a barbaric world. In Far Away (first seen in 2000), Joan is
the new girl at a milliners who turns out to be a "hat genius". Only
gradually does she realise most of her creations will be destroyed. "You
make beauty and it disappears," says her workmate, in awe of the
ephemerality of art.
Their labours seem more futile still – and the
role of art yet more precious – when contrasted with the farmhouse where a
woman covers up for her husband's people-trafficking
operation. This innocuous kitchen is a front for the industrial movement of human
beings, an idea designer Neil Haynes picks up by loading his set into shipping
containers. In Dominic Hill's exquisite production, we see a great mechanical
shifting of corrugated metal, accompanied by Scott Twynholm's grinding sound
score, as the scene changes themselves become part of the action.
Churchill's asymmetrical structure amplifies our
uneasiness about a world that is not as "far away" as we would like
to think. The similar uneasiness in Seagulls (first seen in 1990) is in the
possibility the authorities will hijack the psychic powers of Valery Blair for
military ends. Like an artist, she is only as good as her last performance and,
as the pressure to please becomes debilitating, she yearns for simpler times. It
makes for a fascinating, troubling double bill.
Mark Fisher
Until 8 June (0141–429 0022). Details: www.citz.co.uk
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