Marjorie's World Unhinged @ The Lowry
Robert Beale
24/ 1/2007
MARESA von Stockert's surreal and yet so-truthful account of a slice of life (and death), with the world of ballet as its backdrop, brings laughter and tears to anyone who's had a dancer in the family.
Anyone who's had a father or a mother, for that matter. It all begins in the church-hall dance school of Betty's Ballet Dreams, where Betty is the
(failed) would-be ballet star and her sister, Marjorie, the successful one.
Eric the pianist turns out to marry Marjorie: Eleanor, the girl who stuck at it through the torture of dance training, turns out to be the new star who ousts Marjorie (demoted to second cast - oh, the humiliation!).
Eric has a story of his own, as he gets demoted from his job in a balloon factory, and his son Roland vainly tries to keep him from psychological breakdown.
It all ends when Eric and Marjorie's dog gets killed, and the doggie funeral sees Eric floating into the sky, Winnie-the-Pooh-style, clinging to balloons.
OK, so credulity is stretched, to put it mildly. But this marvellous blend of dance and theatre, for seven performers, film and a mechanical furry dog,
is closely, hilariously, observed, and touchingly aware of the sorrows of existence.
Effective
There's a lot of narration - at least you know what's happening - and the dance set-pieces, with effective music and sound design by Jeremy Cox, are often powerfully expressive.
Joy Constantinides (Marjorie) has the central role and is as accomplished as an actor as she is a dancer - in that capacity she made me both laugh (in her re-interpretation of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy) and nearly cry (in the pas de deux with Max Reed to the mangled strains of The Blue Danube which expressed her farewell to dance stardom).
Laura Caldow (Eleanor) is hugely impressive as actor-dancer, too, and there is no weak link in the whole Tilted Productions team. It includes Steve Jackman's acutely visualised film, Jon Bausor's minimal but effective sets, Suzie Holmes' skilfully designed costumes, and Adrian Plaut's vivid lighting.
And there's a great on-screen representation of a nasty "boss" from Charlie Fowler.
Review in The Stage, Wednesday 27th September 2006.
Marjorie’s World Unhinged
by Mary Redman
The premiere of this innovative, entrancing dance theatre work by award winning choreographer Maresa von Stockert clearly shows the benign influence of From Here to Maturity in its pedigree.
The starting off point is the remembered life of an ageing ballerina which forms a unifying theme for the work. Created with a flexible company of multigenerational actor/dancers, Marjorie’s World confronts sensitively, wittily but directly the grotesque body and age fascism of both the dance and real worlds.
It’s also von Stockert’s first use of really intelligent, imaginative video by Steve Jackman, incorporated seamlessly into the plot, driving the story along. Until now she’s wisely avoided the yawning trap many lesser choreographers fall into of using unnecessary, bad video just because they can.
The production really is a great treasure box of delights from the “Siamese” twin sisters in one costume taking ballet class, reciting the correct French terms at breakneck speed as the “students” carry them out flat on the floor.
Then there’s the dance of the little black dress with a young woman and an amazingly lithe Matthew Morris trying it on for size; bringing it to vivid life as another character in its own right.
Another influence comes from American author/illustrator Edward Gorey that is evident in John Bausor’s visually striking set, props, Suzie Holmes’s costumes, Adrian Plaut’s lighting and Jeremy Cox’s music and soundscape of amplified real time events.
Every subtle detail is taken care of in this thoroughly entertaining, thought provoking work. It deserves nomination in the Oliviers and elsewhere.
Review on www.localsecrets.com.
THEATRE: Marjorie's World
by Rachel Fentem
"Unhinged" is certainly an accurate description of Marjorie’s World. The publicity literature describes the production as "dance theatre" and there is indeed a narrative running through the show, concerning the dreams and disappointments of Marjorie and those who surround her. The opening scene encapsulates the quirky style of choreographer Maresa von Stockert: two dancers take ballet class with siamese-twin teachers, yet the whole scene is twisted through 90°. The dancers lie on the floor, their feet using the back wall of the stage as a ‘floor’. The result for the audience is a bird’s eye view, and this distortion of perspective is characteristic of the show.
Marjorie (the grotesquely expressive Joy Constantinides) is an ageing ballerina. One of the most successful scenes features Eleanor (Laura Caldow), the young dancer elbowing her out of leading roles. Plagued by fears of fat, height and age, Eleanor dances a yearning duet with a pocket mirror, whilst behind her a film is projected from the mirror’s viewpoint, a disorientating, strangely beautiful series of images. An on-stage performance by Marjorie as the Sugar Plum Fairy from the ballet The Nutcracker is another engaging scene, the dancer perfect portrays the wooden, jerky movements of a mechanical doll, her wide, dark eyes eerily empty.
The style of Marjorie’s World is best compared to the literary genre of magical realism; Angela Carter’s book Nights at the Circus, now also a successful stage show, would be a good parallel. It is also reminiscent of the surreal atmosphere of Aurelia’s Oratorio (which has recently completed its second run at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith), but Marjorie’s World fails to capture the dreamy magic of the London show. Whilst individual scenes and images are visually striking and thought-provoking, overall the show felt clunky and disconnected, with ideas pushed to their limit. A more rapid succession of shorter scenes might well have retained the attention and imagination more easily.
Von Stockert’s dancers use their bodies in extraordinary ways. The contortions of Laura Caldow seem to defy physical possibility, whilst the flexing, writhing bone and sinew of Caldow and Natalia Thorn’s backs during the ballet class scene revolt even as they mesmerise and a duet between the two male dancers, Matthew Morris and Max Reed, is an unusual pairing. The dance style of this production is firmly rooted in classical ballet, yet deconstructed with soft edges filed down and replaced by harder-hitting lines and movements. Overall though, whilst there is much to admire in Marjorie’s World Unhinged, the show fails to result in a satisfying whole, remaining somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
Marjorie’s World Unhinged was performed The Junction on Wednesday 27 September.
