Going in with zero knowledge is a plan fraught with mental scramble when the language of the spectacle is in early English, Shakespearean and removed from the actors’ voices. There’s a QR code on the front of the program and it’s there for a reason. Just enough to scan the synopsis and visualise some of the names and we’re off.
Time, like confetti made shredding documents before the run toward composting, renders its space unto a void. There we wait to see if memory serves, or if memory falls apart inside the apathy of watching someone else’s story take centre stage.
Bulging off the counter’s edge by two finger widths, the cash register teeters with no money in the till. It seats itself back enough to be comfortable, still, there is that hint of tipping over and spilling the empty contents.
Child slave labour is a boon to all, and many times over. It pays for itself after the initial orientation training and there isn’t much to leave behind in profits or sharing the loot. Far less harsh than believing in something as retrograde as reciprocal company loyalty.
Time keeps slipping. Life putters on and stumbling is the better part of trying to catch up. Watching it fall apart is where the audience comes to mind.
Coarse hacking coughs linger in the air between silences. Tension cuts itself with a dusting of deep swallowing sounds. The audience has saliva no more.
Needles of the spruce shake off and litter the base of the Christmas tree. There in the middle of Pemberley house, a cut of nature stands in a spot of water dressed for the occasion. The awkwardness is centre stage.
Between the scenes the lights go black save for a lamp on a desk. In the back corner is a man looking over notes over glasses. This is not a part of the play, and he is no manager of the factory. A mere trick of the light.
Wild with abandon sit kids a row behind smacking and slapping their maws as they chew, gnaw and measure out pops of gum, sticky of saliva. Silence is never there when the cheeks make such noises.
The classic tale of frustration leading into suicide and rethinking life choices to bring another year to a close. Once more another look over the bridge and wither come the thoughts of absence.
Travel is so much about being mishandled and watching your keeps roll off the conveyor belt, ready to throw your left shoe at someone trying to run off with your belongings. For those without an itinerary that means keeping at least one non-glass eye on the gate.
Freddy Krueger lines up with one of the more haunting sounds of the pop-sided 90s in the Ballad of the Backstreet Boys, laying waste with suggested blood and theatrical smoke. Bodies are dropping not to the beat of a drum but the sound of snoozing just another few minutes.
Beyond the gap-toothed seating hangs a mirror on the fourth wall (itself never broken) waiting for the grooming sessions. A man will paw at his facial hair a shave or two different to the man on the playbill cover. We are in this kind of deceit.
