ROOM – REVIEW
Image: James Thieree in ROOM. Photo - Manon Bollery
If there is any advice for audiences to James Thierrée’s Sydney Festival production of ROOM it is to submit and embrace the unfolding chaos.
Thierrée and the Compagnie du Hanneton have a journey to go on and from the opening scenes it appears that not even they know where it is going, except that it will be transformative for both them and the audience.
While set firmly in the traditional disciplines of circus, ROOM amps all of these in many different directions and into another level.
Opening with a brief nod to the art of French mime, Marcel Marceau, Thierrée and company quickly set about to establish a narrative based loosely on auditions for a production of sorts, though what this is we don’t know.
Breaking the fourth wall Thierrée tells the audience to expect the unexpected.
From the outset the stage becomes an additional character with its ever changing backdrop of flats resembling the faded walls of an old mansion and trucks that introduce musicians and dancers and then whisk them away to begin a new cycle in the production.
While Thierrée’s extraordinary skills in physicality are on show from the opening scenes, we quickly come to recognise that the company are as equally accomplished, whether in dance, music, mime or contortion.
Two spectacular aerial events with a rope suspended from the ceiling provide heart stopping moments, while the dream-like sequence with a mythical iguana-like creature attempting to seduce its mate leads to the jaw-dropping feat of the actor shimmying backwards up a flat.
With no production notes to identify individual actors a special mention must be made to the stage handlers who move the flats in a balletic manner with great precision, accuracy and creativity.
The grandson of Charlie Chaplin and great grandson of Irish playwright Eugene O’Neill, the Swiss-French Thierrée made his stage debut at age four before training in numerous theatrical disciplines across Europe and the US.
For ROOM, Thierrée is credited as creator, director, costume, composing the original music and being responsible for lighting design ,along with Lucie Delorme and Samuel Bovet.
In lesser hands this could be construed as overkill, but for ROOM, everyone and all departments rise to the task.
ROOM is imaginative, physical, visual and cerebral theatre at its best.
