Gob Squad Creation (Pictures for Dorian)
At The Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts
A Brighton Festival event
Taking Wilde’s novel as their starting point, British-German performance group Gob Squad examine the nature of beauty, vanity and morality in their production Creation (Pictures For Dorian). Which was at the Attenborough Centre as part of the Brighton Festival.
God Squad have quite the reputation and this can often hinder a new work, expectations can run high or people can have very set ideas about what to expect. God Squad did their usual thing of using folk from the local area, “home-grown, organic locally sourced talent” as they put it and this added a very personal edge to a show, which although it’s focused on a universal condition was a deeply personal exploration of the ego’s of the three main performers.
It’s a languid piece, deliberately slow, like the process it’s critiquing, age moves with a glacial pace but is relentless, God Squad looked at their own ideas of how they would be when older and also their hopes and fears of how they might age, this is where the local talent came in.
Three very young actors were posed in a variety of heroic poses whilst questions were asked of them, cameras were trained on them, they were framed literally, floral garlands, wraps of silks draped around shoulders, and the camera captured moments of nothing unusual which were then titled and allowed to fade. Meditation is not a means to an end with Gob Squad. It is both the means and the end.
Three much older actors, perhaps with more of their stage time behind them than left were given a closer treatment, talking of loss of function and change of body, status and time. Beauty was looked at again, found again and time moves on.
God Squad are certainly likable, they can be funny and can also touch on the profound. There was much moving around on stage, a touch of chaos and from it came moments of stillness and contemplation there was very little exploration of morality in this piece, Wilde’s play is all about the effects of moral choices on the body, Gob Squad tightened their triangle of gazes on vanity and beauty alone, it left an odd gap, just sitting there, waiting. “Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror. Kahlil Gibran”
There was little from Wilde’s book, alas, an idea, some quotes but that was it, opening with a flourish with some very funny and dry interjections from the deliciously questioning deadpan of Johanna Freiburg whilst they worked on a Japanese ikebana flower arrangements this show’s meditative pace was set from the off.
Little happens, but the drip drip of thought and pose, of counter pose and comparison along with a soft and ironic deconstructive narrative from the artists of both themselves and their process gave the evening a charming thoughtful edge, there are times when it feels more like a lecture than a performance but on reflections, which is what this whole piece is about, the whole of it, in refection, the meditative soft analysis is of what and who defines beauty worked well with the urgent sotto voiced undertow of Dorian himself :
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
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