Wishful Beginnings review: The end of the world and they know it

Project Arts Centre

***

It begins with a series of questions – trivial, personal or simply unanswerable – posed over the heads of the audience. From there, Norwegian company Verk Produksjoner take us through their dystopian visions. Collectively devised to explore versions of the near future, frenzied movement and a soundtrack ranging from John Dowland to David Bowie are incorporated into the collage of words and ideas.

A blank wooden wall cuts off the stage, creating a barrier that suggests the possibility of a future breakthrough. In the meantime, the five performers remain out front, using white clown masks, wigs and glittering burlesque costumes to create images of a human race that has lost contact with nature, and with all life sources. In an improvised text that absorbs everything from philosophy to goldfish, humanity is seen as out of control, sleepwalking into chaos. Hamlet recurs as a reference: not as randomly as it first appears. In his inability to act for fear of making the wrong choice, Hamlet becomes all of us: passive and powerless.

Some of the fears expressed reflect political realities – the refugee crisis and the destruction of Syria – but most are existential. Environmental catastrophe, technological oppression, bio-warfare, the rise of “golf-course civilisation” – all are presages of the end of life on earth. In one brilliant sequence, familiar mythology and theology are reversed as a new race of human beings is created, by cloning, who inevitably become gods.

Dazzlingly realised, these creatures seemed both alien and familiar: in their high platform boots and twisted headdresses, a cross between glam rock stars and ancient Greek deities. This seems to be the theatrical climax, but is undermined by a slow coda. While the capaciousness of this piece, and of the company's style, deliberately embraces banality as much as profundity, a tighter structure would have allowed its invigorating ideas to take centre stage. Ends October 8th