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The Oresteia

February 15, 2009 | ONLINE ONLY
Sarah-Jane Silvester

Production: The Oresteia
Venue: York Theatre Royal
Rating: ***

“You ready for some crazy shit?” These were the words of the young gentleman standing behind me in the queue for Belt Up’s latest performance, The Oresteia. Renowned for their notoriously hands-on acting style, Belt Up seek to push the boundaries of dramatic production, experimenting with dramatic techniques which made them Edinburgh International Festival Award Winners in 2008. For me, placed on the back row, next to an empty seat, my first thought was one of dread: they were going to touch me. Sat where I was I was a sitting duck just waiting to become the victim of their latest
“crazy shit”!

The play, written by Belt Up’s own Jamie Wilkes, is based on Aeschylus’ Greek trilogy of the same name, which tells of the curse upon the house of Atreus. Murder, revenge, mythology and curses from beyond the grave – plenty of scope for an innovative drama group. But I must say the whole thing was remarkably “un-crazy”. True to Belt Up form, at one point a character clad in white face-paint did come and cuddle my leg, yes, but the audience interaction held nothing like the intensity of last year’s production of A Clockwork Orange.

Nevertheless, there were several noteworthy touches reassuring me that Belt Up had not lost all of its creative energy. The use of hand puppets and differing accents to produce a busy crowd of people with only eight actors was particularly effective. Although the lighting didn’t vary hugely, one scene in the dark lit solely by the narrators’ lighters was amusing, especially when one lighter went out causing some impromptu humour! The well choreographed free movement scene, showing the madness of Orestes tormented by his conscience voiced by the three Furies, was impressive, but
somehow familiar-correct me if I’m wrong but had not the same moves been reused from last year’s Clockwork?

It was in the slick, fast pace of the dialogue shared between the actors playing the narrators, the captured princess and The Furies where Belt Up’s real strength was displayed. As a tight-knit elite group of actors, with much experience of working alongside each other, it is here that Belt Up show that they are not an any ordinary student acting company. These perfectly timed snappy sequences carried the play forward and prevented it from dragging. Condensing a Greek epic into an hour and a half without leaving the action feeling rushed is no easy task and an achievement in its own right! The script was at times beautifully constructed, playing with rhyme and rhythm to amusing effect, yet it is my fear that, in embracing such a challenge of working on a play from scratch, too little time was invested in thinking creatively with the production element and it was this which left that just-about-tangible feeling of déjà vu. A progressive drama company’s very own curse.

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