Adelaide Festival

Kidd Pivot’s Revisor turns The Government Inspector on its head

Matilda Marseillaise
Reading Time: 4 minutes

An Australian exclusive at Adelaide Festival was Canadian company, Kidd Pivot’s production of Revisor. Taken from the Russian name for his play Revizor, Nikolai Gogol’s play is better known to anglophone audiences as The Government Inspector.

Revisor
Image: Andrew Beveridge

Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young were both co-creators of their production of Revisor. It made its premiere in Vancouver, where the company is based, in February 2019. Pite in charge of the stunning choreography and Young was in charge of the voice actors who voiced all of the parts and the narration.

 

Kidd Pivot’s approach to Revisor is intelligent and innovative. The characters’ voices are heard through pre-recorded sound to which they lip-sync. Their movements are highly exaggerated and from contemporary dance rather than the usual theatrical style the play would normally be performed in.

Image: Andrew Beveridge

Revisor is not a strict retelling of The Government Inspector. Some characters are missing and some details have changed. The Governor is the Director of the Complex (performed by Doug Letheren) and there is no daughter, just his flirtatious wife (Jennifer Florentino in the part). However, the key premise remains: The Director/Mayor/Governor has received a tip-off that a government inspector is coming in secret to do an inspection and write a report. When a government official is found staying at the inn, charging everything to his bill, and has an unlikely story about why he is in town (to move a comma, (yes, really)), the Director/Mayor/Governor and all of his officials become convinced that this man is the secret government inspector they’ve been warned about. The man is swiftly housed in the Director/Mayor/Governor’s house and lavished with welcome parties and bribes, and decides it’s too good to pass up and to plays along.

 

A female narrator‘s voice, Meg Roe, is played throughout. At first merely narrating what is happening and who is doing what. However, in the second half, all of the actions from the first half are repeated, but with the dancers now stripped bare, no longer in their costumes that define and identify them. She will tell them to walk two steps to the right, and that is what they will do. In this act the dancers truly shine, their movement becomes freer and more fluid. The choreography allows the dancers to travel across the floor, making use of the entire stage, compared to the choreography of the first act, which depicted the characters and narrative in a more rigid manner.

 

Is this repeated and revised act the real one? Is this the first act as we saw it but with a comma moved to its rightful place?

Revisor
Image: Andrew Beveridge

While the whole cast is wonderful, special mention needs to be made for the performances of some of the dancers. The postmaster, played by Rakeem Hardy, is particularly compelling and impressive, especially in one of the later scenes where he struggles to tell them what he has discovered. Brendon Alley in the role of Osip. the poorly-treated servant to the Revisor was particularly impressive for his fast, exaggerated movements, which appeared almost akin to being electrocuted when he is hiding under the bed. His ramblings, and associated movements, before his master wakes, are like witnessing a descent into madness. Brandon Alley also performs the role of Doctor Harlow in Kidd Pivot’s Revisor. Jennifer Florentino was delightful as the over the top, flirtatious, fluid director’s wife, Anna.

 

Kidd Pivot has perfected its very contemporary take on The Government Inspector in Revisor, and exhibits very talented dancers, tight choreography and wonderful voice actors. We look forward to seeing future Kidd Pivot productions should they make it to Australia.

5 CROISSANTS

Matilda Marseillaise was a guest of Adelaide Festival.

 

Adelaide Festival 2023 and the Australian exclusive run of Revisor have now concluded.

 

OTHER ADELAIDE FESTIVAL CONTENT

Messa da Requiem: a feast for the senses

So Much Myself: Piano Portraits shines new light on archival footage of memorable women

The Cage Project: piano as you’ve never heard it before

The Sheep Song warns be careful what you wish for

So Much Myself: Piano Portraits at Adelaide Festival tells a millennium of stories celebrating discovery and courage

Cédric Tiberghien is coming to Australia for recitals and the world premiere of The Cage Project

 

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The Sheep Song warns be careful what you wish for

Matilda Marseillaise
Reading Time: 4 minutes

One of the most anticipated shows in the Adelaide Festival 2023 season, Belgian theatre collective FC Bergmann brought The Sheep Song to the Dunstan Playhouse for an Australian exclusive. Being a collective, the roles in The Sheep Song are played by different people in different countries but the names we refer to below are those who played those roles in the Australian season.

The Sheep Song

The show opens with naked man (Yorrith de Bakker) with only his face covered pulling a rope and ringing a large bell above the stage. The curtain is raised and a flock of real sheep graze on the stage before a sheep unlike the others shows itself. This is the sheep who dares to be human, who dares to do something different to the rest. But you should be careful what you wish for. The sheep-man finds itself in the human world and is exposed to the good, the bad and the ugly, though he doesn’t see their faces as they are all obscured with thick stockings or similar material.

 

Unfortunately, as clever as this show is in many ways, it falls short in others. Starting with the clever, the main character, the sheep-man, played by Titus De Voogdt, wore shoes like sheep hooves which had him walking on the balls of his feet rather than having his heels touch the ground for the whole show. To do so for most of the 90 minute show would have been quite tiring and quite challenging on the feet and legs.

 

The set is an inventive use of space with two travelators along the front of the stage on which various scenes or props are placed. It is also used to add impressive visual effect to synchronised choreographed moves by some of the dancers.

The Sheep Song
Image: Tim Standing, Daylight Breaks

The music is worthy of mention. A combination of a recorded track and a banjo player sitting at the front of the stage (Frederik Leroux-Roels) provide the sound throughout the show. The lighting is also atmospheric and moody with dim lighting often and a spotlight from above or from off the stage such as for the bullfighter about to enter the ring.

 

It is quite impressive to be able to stage a show in which there is no dialogue (apart from the puppet and the puppet master in two brief scenes, which is in Italian and not necessary to understand). This of course opens it up to international audiences without the need for translation and local actors but it also provides the audience with a different experience to the norm.

 

However, as mentioned above, The Sheep Song did have its shortcomings. Even though it was only 90 minutes long, the performance was longer than it needed to be. The perverted puppet-show and its perverted puppet-master didn’t really need to make a repeat performance and were extremely uncomfortable to watch as the puppet was forced to do things it didn’t want to do. The scene with the baby crying incessantly didn’t need to go on for as long as it did. The audience got the message that it was incessant and exasperating. While their choreography was impressive, some of the dance scenes didn’t seem to have a place or serve any purpose in the story.

 

Overall, The Sheep Song is a clever concept with an impressive set, music, lighting and cast but the story itself could do with some revision to make it tighter.  If the show didn’t have such unnecessarily violence and uncomfortable scenes that didn’t seem to serve a purpose, we would have given it more croissants.

3.5 CROISSANTS

 Matilda Marseillaise was a guest of Adelaide Festival.

 

Adelaide Festival 2023 has now concluded and the Australian season of The Sheep Song has now concluded.

 

For our other Adelaide Festival content, please see below:

Messa da Requiem: a feast for the senses

So Much Myself: Piano Portraits shines new light on archival footage of memorable women

So Much Myself: Piano Portraits at Adelaide Festival tells a millennium of stories celebrating discovery and courage

Cédric Tiberghien is coming to Australia for recitals and the world premiere of The Cage Project

The Cage Project: piano as you’ve never heard it before

 

For other events with French and Francophone links, check out our What’s on in March.

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