ÜberŠkrip

This sophisticated, hi-tech version of the 'little Wikipedia of world wars' is fresh, young and engaged. But the paradox is found between the extremely complex, sophisticated scenography of the 'killing machine' which, through history, grinds all and everyone, and the shockingly simple texts that not even once go beyond the commemorative declamations or school lists. This does give enough tension all the time, but the actors, performers, singers, don’t reach beyond the metronomic measuring of the monotonous action. But perhaps this is the catch and this is what they were looking for? [...] The truly imposing mise-en-scène, the menacingly unhealthy and artificial strobe light and the strangely pared down text, this combination has its deeper meaning. If we’re out of breath, we’re also out of word.

From all this material a musical sprouted. A performance with militant iconography, with powerful movement, rhythm and visuals. [...] And when they put all this on stage, it turned into, as we could see for ourselves, a true Gesamtkunstwerk. This piece of art is a collective work of exceptional creative individuals who each in her or his own way contributed to the final image of this particular musical-theatrical work, the topic of which could hardly be more relevant to our time. Particularly in the time when Europe is witnessing masses of victims from wars in the Middle East, but instead of empathy we’re only willing to offer to them an increasing dose of hatred.

The form of the piece is largely musical. Indeed, in a different venue, or without seating, you could maybe even claim it as 'concert-theatre'. (Yes, all the music is actually pre-recorded, but since Sleaford Mods, I reckon even that distinction is up-for-grabs...) The thing the piece is most influenced by is pretty transparently the work of Slovenian band extraordinaire Laibach. Not just the music, but the incredible video-projection onslaught. I mean, it is *really* full-on. Like watching a strobe light for an hour, but with pictures. And pictures superimposed over the performers/performance so that everything feels part of the same machine. [...] This is a powerful bit of work that also manages the neat trick of being enormous fun at the same time (as long as you like industrial music). It reminded me most powerfully that we in Britain tend to relegate music in theatre to 'atmosphere' and scene changes (Mitchell’s Cleansed notwithstanding). Or, perhaps: we rarely foreground anything that sounds like this in 'musical theatre'. Imagine if we had 'musicals' that sounded more like post-punk than easy listening... As you can probably see, I’ve fallen a bit in love with the Slovenian way of doing things...