Factory 2

O’Reilly Theatre **

Factory 2is already in session as the audience files in, the actors nonchalantly watching us watching them. This is the opening gambit in the frustrating game of voyeurism that defines Krystian Lupa's seven and a half hour piece of durational theatre inspired by Andy Warhol. In the first 10 minutes we watch a screening of a Warhol film, Blow Job, in which the camera is trained on the face of a young man receiving fellatio. What follows is a live imitation of Warhol's aesthetic, where "the true action happens below the frame." The experience is akin to being the only sober guest at a party, realising that those people you have chosen to spend your night with are self-absorbed and obnoxious.

The first act of Factory 2is deliberately confrontational. The actors formally begin by inviting the audience to ask questions and then end the sequence by genuinely insulting them.

There is gratuitous nudity, genital objectification, a lesbian orgy, inane repetition, and little evidence of any joy or passion among the collaborators of one of the most famous artistic collectives. The effect, however, is not shocking but boring. It is as if Lupa is testing, teasing the audience. It will “all come together or fall apart”, someone says; are you prepared to take the chance?

Luckily it is a premonition of more promising moments of small intimacy to come: a withdrawn Warhol coming into his own when he is dressed as a woman, as he embraces a woman who is dressed as him; Edie Sedgewick clutching an open shirt to her chest, trying to keep herself together; and, in the penultimate scene – the best scene in seven and half hours – the pope railing against the failing subtitles.

For those who applauded rapturously at the end, these moments proved to be flashes of genius, confirming the validity of their epic struggle with the deliberately indulgent and maddening performance. However, for me, it was too little too late. My applause was for my own stamina, an ovation of relief.

Run finished