Writing in 1989, playwright Howard Barker described his work as a “theatre of catastrophe” – a conception of drama where meaning is not allied to authorial intent but ultimately to the moral response of the individual viewer. His works are therefore organised around antinomies of reason: circumstances and actions whose meaning can be justifiably explained in a number of opposing (and often mutually exclusive) ways. First staged around this time, and with conflict at its very core, Barker’s The Possibilities is being revived by director Matthew Parker.
The piece is made up of a series of ten vignettes where antipathetic ways of life wrestle for supremacy. We meet a weaver’s family working on a rug as shrapnel darts around them; an exhibitionist is put on trial in a restrained dystopian future; an Emperor stands naked and whimpering before his men on the eve of a battle; a prostitute readies herself for a night on the streets.
Otherwise self-contained, the playlets are linked by dance routines whose short, repetitive movements allude notions of shared humanity. At first, the performers’ steps may seem to underline their essential difference, but together they function like music – each bringing something unique to the undulating whole. Conflict thus appears to be the very stuff of life; resolution becomes a violent and oppressive act.
Such a portrayal escapes the sentimentality of a Michael Jackson video (and indeed the old cliché that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter) by recourse to ‘capital-R’ Romanticism. The Possibilities is a lusty play whose characters are animal and desiring; their motivations cannot be readily explained in terms of cold reason. Words, as ever, fall short of fully communicating experience.
It is fitting then that Parker’s realisation of the text appeals, above all, to the senses – this is a loud, bright, fast-paced production whose melodramatic bent only occasionally grates. It’s success is underpinned by strong choreography that makes excellent use of the limited space and never allow the dust to settle. On the latter count, Parker’s staging eschews the austerity of more recent productions of Barker’s work – opting instead for bold lighting and colour, and evoking the many varied spatial and temporal environments by cleaving the space with draperies and bulky props.
From a sizeable if not always well utilised cast, Helen Meadmore and Olivia Onyehara give particularly memorable performances; Meadmore alternates between wise, sophisticated world-weariness and bulging-eyed incredulity, something echoed too in Jonathan Butler’s mixing of impotent rage and fear: the machinations of the viscera clash noisily with the rationalising mind. Onyehara’s combination of sass and sauce meanwhile hints at how the two may work together.