Here at Starburst Towers, we’ll quite often say in our reviews words to the effect of ‘This is a very “Marmite” show – you will either love it or hate it’. This time, we really, really mean it. To the extent that we have genuinely struggled to know how to tell you about ROOM, currently part of the Edinburgh International Festival.
‘What’s it about?’ you’re probably asking. The usual questions we use to try to frame reviews: Who? What? Why? When? Where? How? – are all questions that have no place around this production, which is not so much a piece of theatre as it is a live action art installation. It would also be fair to label it ‘choose your own theatre experience’, in that you could choose which of the performers to focus on and follow them throughout the running time, to experience something completely different to if you focused on someone else.
To give the basics, and this is drawn from the “digital programme” made available to us after the performance: ‘Following his sell-out 2016 show The Toad Knew, James Thierrée returns to the International Festival with ROOM, a spectacular new show that blends live music, dance, mime and curiosities into a hallucinatory spectacle that defiantly rejects categorisation’. It’s interesting that even the festival of which the show is a part can’t quite decide what it is.
Perhaps then, we should talk about what we saw. We saw a lot, and it should be noted that the stated running time of an hour and forty-five minutes ran over, quite spectacularly, to a solid two hours. It’s unclear whether this was due to something which happened during this performance, or if the whole thing should be regarded as akin to free-form jazz. Perhaps sometimes it’s a tight 90 minutes, and sometimes, like when we saw it, moments linger and are indulged as the company sees fit?
What we see is… musical…operatic…acrobatic. It’s a medley of scenes which segue into each other with, perhaps, no overarching narrative. This is a point Thierrée makes fun of more than once – he knows that there isn’t a “traditional” story here – knows that we’re joining with him in experiencing something that defies description, as much as it does categorisation. The room itself bends, twists and swirls, becoming the backdrop and foreground to the unfolding action, all of which appears designed to make you question your sense of reality. There are moments of quiet, but even if the action may sometimes seem to pause, there is always something happening.
If we were going to try to say what ROOM is about, what should we say? Once again, what one person will take from this show, may well be radically different to what someone else might. Some of the options include: a commentary on the artistic process; a reflection on gentrification and how it effects the artists who make a deprived area “cool”; the Woolf-ian need for A Room of One’s Own, and how that is realised; how a person’s need for space changes over both short and long-term time spans; the experience of the Bohemians in Montmartre, or, possibly; one man’s descent into frustration-induced madness.
This may all sound somewhat abstract, and possibly boring – it’s really not, and at points, it’s very funny. It’s Swiss; it’s French; it’s avant-garde; it’s modern on a very old foundation; it’s contradictions; it’s a meditation on the nature of relationships – both artistic and personal. If this sounds like your sort of thing, it’s very highly recommended. If not, avoid.
