Robert Lepage: Lipsynch
Robert Lepage has been working with North East-based Theatre Sans Frontieres (sorry: no way of easily inserting accents!) on a piece called Lipsynch, which was performed at Northern Stage this week. This is a work-in-progress so there was no press night and no reviews (although the regional morning paper, The Journal, did run one), so there is no review on the BTG. However it would be wrong of us to let the occasion pass without some comment: hence this blog entry.
Lipsynch is, at the moment, almost five and a half hours long (including two intervals) but will eventually run for nine hours. In its present incarnation it is a series of seven interlocking stories, each based around one of the characters in the main story. An international cast of nine play a whole host of characters and much use is made of Lepage’s trademark multimedia and a set which is brilliantly constructed to change - before your very eyes - from an aircraft to a house to a tube train to a film studio to a restaurant and so on.
The changes are done in full light in front of the audience and much of the multimedia is operated from onstage - and very visible - consoles. Video cameras are very much in evidence. At times, indeed, we see characters metamorphose into others in front of us. In other words, this is alienation in a very Brechtian manner, setting up the kind of tension between the naturalistic playing and the theatrical artifice which Brecht intended us to feel. Throw in the fact that the structure of the piece, both as it stands and as one assumes it will develop, is similar to a novel, and you have a fascinating hybrid which I found held my attention throughout and it certainly did not feel as though I’d been sitting in a theatre for that amount of time - although I have to say that, had it been in the old Northern Stage auditorium, with its original and not-terribly-comfortable seats, I am pretty sure I would have been hoping for it to finish long before it did!
There is more emphasis on text or, as Lepage expressed it in his Foreword in the programme, voice. Four languages are used (English, French, German and Spanish), sometimes with surtitles, sometimes without.
Some people did leave at the first interval. A good half of the row where I was sitting did not return. They may, of course, have moved to seats closer to the stage but I don’t think so. I suppose that it’s inevitable that something as different as this will not appeal to everyone and that was confirmed by what I heard (evesdropped on!) at both intervals. There was a lot of “I’m not sure what’s happening but I’m enjoying (or not) it”.
It will be interesting to see the final piece but I’m given to understand that it won’t be performed in Newcastle. Someone else will have to let us know what it’s like!