The last time Valentijn Dhaenens was at the Edinburgh Fringe, it was with BigmoutH, his award-winning solo show about the great orators of history. Here, he picks up where he left off with the story of those who answered their call to arms.
Judging by the extensive bibliography Dhaenens has drawn the text for SmallWaR from a variety of first hand accounts which, as stated in the BigmoutH text has presumably been equally “abbreviated, mixed, looped, translated, modernized, combined and paraphrased”.
Dhaenens is the only actor present on stage, appearing in six different guises in the form of holographic images which appear on the black gauze screen behind him. In person he plays a nurse, tending to the broken, shell-shocked soldiers of world war one.
The images are extremely well executed, when the soldiers open their mouths to speak their voices emerge seamlessly, interacting with the live performer as if they were real. The sound design is equally well-pitched and extremely unsettling. As with the text, sounds are recorded, looped and layered to build an almost imperceptible accompaniment like the hum of a machine or the needle on a vinyl record still running once the listener has left.
Dhaenens is an exceptional performer. The stillness and presence he is capable of is riveting. Like the orators of the past, when he speaks, you listen. In contrast to the previous piece, which returns for three performances mid-festival, SmallWaR is quiet, sinister and almost entirely intoned, as if he were delivering a sermon. Without becoming ghoulish a tone is struck which is eerily hollow. As if we are present in the void that war creates inside the soldiers, victims and witnesses of hell.
120 million people have died at war since 1914 and like the commemorative services that took place on the anniversary of its outbreak this week, there is no message, only that we remember.SmallWaR is an intense, sophisticated piece of work, the subtleties of which would benefit exponentially from re-visiting, re-watching, re- listening.
