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Review: Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls
At Workshop Theatre, Leeds University
WITH two productions in just under a year, they're becoming rather prolific – at least by their standards.
Imitating the Dog, whose unorthodox style of theatre makes them one of Europe's most innovative companies, normally like to take their time when they're in creative mode. But they're now evolving.
The latest stage is manifest in Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls, which next week has a two-night run at Leeds University's Workshop Theatre.
It's a rare chance to experience their surreal but gripping approach to performance which blends theatre and cinema to create something which plays with our perceptions and preconceptions.
Using animation, projections, unusual stage sets, angles and lighting they create another, darker world as seen with their most recent offerings at West Yorkshire Playhouse: last year's Kellerman and Hotel Methuselah in 2006.
But with their latest production they've taken a slightly different approach.
"Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls is different – but similar," says director Andrew Quick, "With the last shows we have relied a lot on back projections and a screen which the actors work against.
"This time we've got three or four 'windows' and create the filmic look with physical sets that move. We make the film in front of their eyes. I'd say this has a similar 'other-world' feel to it but it's a little more playful.
"I hope audiences will see the progression and like it. It's like a band having a third album, you know, it's a bit different but we recognise it has some of the old tunes in it. The good thing is you won't have had to have watched our previous stuff to understand it.
"We've tried to make it more entertaining and slightly easier to understand, more accessible. We can't keep doing the same old tricks because what we do is essentially experimental work and with that there's always that pressure to be different, but we don't go out to be wild and wacky."
Still, it's fair to say their approach is perhaps the most avant garde of any modern theatre company. While observers may have mixed reactions there's no doubt the finished product is the result of a lengthy and sometimes erratic creative process.
Quick says: "We have all these wonderful, theoretical ideas on paper but trying to make them real its always a struggle, albeit an enjoyable struggle. You always say 'Why am I doing this? Why don't we do something simpler? But that's part of the challenge. That's the way we work.
"A lot of our ideas are crazy and filmic, then we think: 'But how do we stage that?!' We have a great idea to do a zombie show, but we're wondering how we could do it without people laughing at them.
"During rehearsal we test out anything then play games with things, the real trick is to know how long to leave the rehearsal period as playful as possible before tying it down. Too long and there's no finished show, too early and it could be boring – we always leave it a bit late which is rather stressful."
Technically their unique style of presentation poses a logistical nightmare. For example, in Kellerman and Hotel Methuselah the blend of cinema and theatre means that the actors have to perform to a soundtrack, including their own voice pre-recorded and played back. They then have to lip-sync their lines as precisely as possible.
Something similar will be obvious in Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls except the dialogue will be recorded in one language while the actors on stage will speak in another – the idea is to recreate the sense of watching a dubbed foreign film.
In other ways the setting will seem more conventional, with more real life people appearing and more live action – the projections of old have all but disappeared this time round.
If it all sounds a little bewildering and odd then don't worry – that's sort of the point. Imitating the Dog never intend to present literal theatre, even if they are fans of storytelling.
Quick says: "Our work nudges and tickles away at you. We don't want it to be fast food you consume. People might not get it at first then a few days later they might say ah, I get that bit now. But we think our audiences are intelligent and might take time to process the information.
"That's something that's true of films too. When you're watching a film you can initially forget slower or stranger bits and they're the bits we're interested in. Because we're all about remembering and the visual experience. A lot of our work is about remembering, how memory can fail you and how you recreate the past through visual memory."
Another change this time round is the union between imitating the Dog, the National Theatre of Greece and the Cyprus Theatre Organisation. It's posed a few issues, but nothing they haven't been able to resolve.
Quick says: "We're now on the same hymn sheet now, but they come from a different culture. More of a straight theatre world, more realism. They also bring lots of acting skills but watching them deal with our approach is very interesting.
"Over the years our team has developed a kind of shorthand to our work and having to unravel that and put it back together again for 'outsiders' has been a real challenge.
"For example, sometimes the actors may face forwards, even if they're addressing the person next to them and their natural inclination, obviously, is to turn and face the person in question. But they've managed to overcome that now, thankfully."
Imitating the Dog hope Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls will lure people into their world, an aspiration they're slowly achieving, almost by stealth.
"When we did Kellerman," recalls Quick. "We got a review in The Guardian, then the same journalist who'd written it said in her blog a few days later how parts of the production had started to reform in her thinking and if she were to write the review again then she would write it differently.
"Though we can get a few negative reviews from theatre critics because they somehow feel it is attacking the conventions of traditional theatre and that's not really our aim at all.
"Curiously the rest of our audiences are more positive. The worst we seem to get from people is that they may not have fully understood it, but they did find it engaging. And I think more and more people know we don't lay things out on a plate for them – they now know the form."
Tuesday and Wednesday, Workshop Theatre, Leeds University, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, 8 and 10, 6pm and 7.30pm. Visit www.imitatingthedog.co.uk OR www.ents24.com/web/venue/Leeds/Workshop-Theatre
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