GEOMETRY OF FEAR (Matsena Productions/Stream Theatre)***

 

By Dave 

Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/41 

Available until: Livestreams at 7.30pm every night until 14^th March with matinées at 2.30pm on 13^th and 14^th March.

Content warning: Contains adult themes.

Geometry of Fear is a piece of physical theatre created in response to two of the really big issues of 2020, which remain big issues today – the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The term ‘Geometry of Fear’ was coined by Herbert Read, an art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher. He used it in 1952 to describe the work of a group of sculptors. The work was full of human and animal figures which were described as being full of despair and frustration or looked liked they were running away.

The sculptors are Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolo and William Turnbull but the musical was actually inspired by a different sculptor who was not one of the original group, though she was working at a similar time. Elisabeth Frink’s work reflects ‘the nature of man’ and she also sculpted animals, particularly horses. However although a lot of her work does look quite scary, she was also interested in representing ‘the divine’ so it doesn’t really seem like she belonged to the Geometry of Fear group, even if some of her sculptures did look similar.

It is quite difficult to be sure what’s going on in Geometry of Fear just from watching but I did a bit of research and it said the set is supposed to represent Elisabeth Frink’s studio. The characters do look a bit like sculptures. Angharad Evans has lit the stage so we see figures rather than people, struggling physically and mentally in the half-darkness of the stage.

I don’t think this is intended to dehumanise the people at all, it seems more like the piece is saying that the problems aren’t just happening to specific individuals. Anyone can catch COVID. Anyone from the BIPOC community can suffer from racism. The details of who they are doesn’t matter because nobody is immune (even the people who have had the vaccine still have a chance of catching COVID) and the performers on the stage are representing not just one person but many people.

The stage is mostly in half darkness but sometimes the stage is filled with a red light. As was discussed in one of Chickenshed Theatre’s Monologue 4 monologues, red can represent many things, positive and negative but in Geometry of Fear, it seems to represent the dangers of COVID and racism.

The set is a tiny strip of stage and it looks like the audience sit along the length of it on both sides. This means the audience is a lot closer to the action. Also, the stage resembles an alley, particularly as it’s so dark, and alleys are often associated with danger, as in the phrase “I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley.” This contributes to the strong atmosphere of danger created by directors Anthony and Kel Matsena.

The lighting and the shape of the stage contributes to this too and so does the way the piece is presented. It is physical theatre so there is a lot of movement. There are physical fights, which are quite disturbing to watch. There is a lot of noise and shouting. There isn’t much dialogue in this piece and what is there is quite faint and hard to understand. Maybe I’m going deaf considering I’m so ‘ancient’ but this could be intentional. The feeling of not quite knowing what’s going on is frightening. So can the feeling of speaking out and not quite being heard and it is a feeling that is all too familiar to the minority groups.

As it was a livestream, I tried to be clever by print-screening the cast list. Unfortunately, Stream Theatre are too clever for that and all I got was a blank screen (unless of course I pressed print screen a bit too late). I’ve tried to find a cast list online but without success so I can’t credit anyone individually but they are very good. They are physically very expressive, creating atmosphere in their movements and telling stories with their emotions, even when they can’t tell them in words. There’s a powerful moment when a young man speaks about George Floyd and another where a woman lies prone on the ground as a man kneels beside her. We don’t get to know who all these people are but we don’t need to have followed the news to know that things are very wrong in the world of Geometry of Fear.

It would have been nice to have a bit more clarity on who the characters were – though maybe there was enough information for most people – but this a striking and startling piece of theatre and even through a screen, you can feel how atmospheric it is.