Playful show within a show

Seagulls Repertory Theatre, Dundee A LITTLE self-obsession can be a dangerous thing. So when theatre companies start making plays about theatre companies, you know you're in trouble unless there's some degree of irony at play.

Andrzej Sadowski's new play for the quirky Scarlet Theatre sails pretty close to the wind in terms of risk-running, taking as its starting point the legacy of iconic Russian theatre director Meyerhold, whose anti-realist, avant-garde approach to acting was in stark contrast to the officially designated culture of Stalinism.

Here we find Meyerhold and his ensemble locked in the rehearsal room on the eve of their eviction from their theatre. As they go through the motions of rehearsing Chekhov's The Seagull, real life, in the shape of secret policemen and architects, intrudes on proceedings. But beyond the public turmoil lies a private, backstage world of unrequited love, secret affairs and insecurity. Just your everyday, messed up actors, then, except that by setting up such a dialectic between the real world and an imagined one, Sadowski is making a political point about the power of art to transcend the everyday.

It's performed in Scarlet's patented mix of physical jerks and absurdist frippery, itself a pleasant break from the stultifying naturalism that still has such a stranglehold on contemporary theatre.

Whether theatregoers are actually bothered about the form and content debate is doubtful, but, elliptical as it is at times, Katarzyna Deszcz's production is a playful look at the pertinence of an inward-looking, exploratory theatre in a revolutionary age.

Neil Cooper

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