The Goth Play

It's not often when I go to the theatre that I feel like I'm being thrown into the fantasy world of the artists involved in creating the piece. Last night, as I watched a group of eager twenty-somethings dressed in scraps of leather like pale, slightly dumpy versions of Manga comic heroes and heroines pretend to be Greek gods and nymphs, perform human sacrifices, and hump each other senseless, I felt just that. The production was entitled The Greek Play and it was created by a company whose work I had never seen before -- Elastic Future.

Although the play resembled something a bunch of undergraduates might have put on in the 1960s, you had to give them full marks for their enthusiasm. They transformed a drab Mission gallery space into a full-on 1960s-style performance "nook" complete with art, floor cushions, walls festooned with thrift store fabrics and odd lumpy platforms, and free wine (hurrah!) The play itself was a mish-mash of themes and characters from Greek tragedy. Clytemnestra went on murderous spree; Cassandra lisped and wandered and wept; Apollo shagged a nymph; Athena shagged a nymph; the nymphs shagged each other. When the actors weren't wailing and screaming and prostrating themselves on the floor, they were doing their best imitations of actors in early Star Trek episodes. Standing looking into middle-distance with their legs spread and their chins held high, they talked like the sorts of people who would say "boldly go."