adventures 07: anxious pleasures
Maggie Hoffman, Steve Cuiffo, Major Bang, SOH
THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE’S ADVENTURES O7 IS THE SUCCESSOR TO 2006’S ADVENTURES IN THE DARK, THE BEST OF WHICH INCLUDED THE NETHERLANDS-BASED DANCE COMPANY, EMIO GRECO|PC AND TWO IMPRESSIVE AUSTRALIAN WORKS: NIGEL JAMIESON’S HONOUR BOUND (SOON TO TOUR TO EUROPE) AND BRIAN LIPSON’S A SMALL ATTENDANCE IN THE ANTECHAMBER. THIS YEAR’S ADVENTURES ARE ALL FROM OFF-SHORE AND INCLUDE THE ENTICING FUTURE TENSE AND BIG BANG, WORKS ABOUT CURRENT ANXIETIES AND PROBABLE HORRORS.
An eclectic Adentures 07 comprises “visiting international festival highlights.” It commenced with Cloudgate’s Wild Cursive in May and concludes at the end of the year with Peter Brook’s rendition of Athol Fugard’s gripping Apartheid-era drama, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, with actors from Mali and the Congo. In C-90, British stand-up comic Daniel Kitson is Henry, an archive worker who discovers new dimensions to life from a musicassette. A dance double bill, Future Tense, from Canadian choreographer Andre Gringas (CYP17, about future freaks) and France’s Pierre Rigal (Erection, tracing our evolution into techno beings), pairs dancers with projections.
Major Bang: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dirty Bomb, is the show RealTime readers will be eagerly anticipating. New York’s Foundry Theatre looks back to the future through, among others, the eyes and ears of Dr Strangelove and Lenny Bruce (riffing “upon the surreal semantics of the words, ‘war on terror’“). Written by Kirk Lynn, directed by Paul Lazar and performed by actor-magician and Wooster Group artistic associate Steve Cuiffo and Radiohole co-founder Maggie Hoffman, the work was described by the New York Times as “surely the happiest show to have been inspired by the horrors of 9/11.” RT
Foundry Theatre, Major Bang, Adventures 07; Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, July 17-29, www.sydneyoperahouse.com
RealTime issue #79 June-July 2007 pg. 35
