The English-based Theatre de Complicite is one of the more lauded international touring companies in the world, but their latest production, playing in the Dublin Theatre Festival, is a highly accomplished theatrical confidence trick offering no dramatic reward for its more-than two hours traffic on the stage. The audience is challenged near the start: "Not even if we live to be 1,000 will we ever solve the riddle that is the rabbit". By the end of a long evening we are at least certain that we do not wish to live to be 1,000, and most will be emphatic that, whatever may be the riddle that is the rabbit, it is a matter of no consequence whatever.
Purporting to be some kind of Nordic epic, based on a book by Torgny Lindgren, the show starts narratively when a flea from a grey rabbit bites one Jasper who immediately falls into a paroxysm of death, followed by most of the rest of the inhabitants of his home town which, despite the almost total extinction of its inhabitants, becomes a place of disorder and confusion. There is, we are told, a redistribution of inheritance and, where, we are asked, will it all end? By the end of the performance, after much stylish mayhem and murder and naive discourse, we don't greatly care.
Our attention is held because here, clearly, is a company of considerable talent and skill in terms of acting and staging and general theatricality. But they are creating a world to which their audience is granted no meaningful access: successive efforts to suspend disbelief are co-unfounded by successive dramatic implausibilities and a sustained dramatic implausibility even within the surreal context within which the story is framed. Neither the effectiveness of the acting nor the accomplishment of the staging with its initially impressive use of puppets can win hearts or minds. Even under the skilled direction of Simon McBurney there are only stage effects, never any dramatic coherence. Could it be that this is an attempt to puncture satirically some of the bubbles of pretension that increasingly characterise "fashionable" theatre these days? Maybe. But it takes far too long about it and provides far too few laughs in the process.
Until Saturday (Oct 14th). Booking at 01-677 2600.
