It Could Still Happen’s The Herald opened at Buddies in Bad Times last night.  It’s a really difficult work to pigeonhole.  It’s a poetic exploration of “labour” through words and music using Ancient Greece as a sort of vehicle for discussing more contemporary, or perhaps, universal concerns. It starts with playwright and director Jill Connell making a speech in front of a projection of the “principles for work” which could perhaps be summarised as “labour should be a temple of awareness” but along the way we get a lot of astrology; night charts and day charts and Antonio Banderas and whether his fashion line includes capes.

It’s all set up with the audience on three sides of the performance space.  That seems important because there’s a lot of what might be described as “breaking the fourth wall” except there really are no walls and no clear boundary between “performer space” and “audience space” at all. 

Enter the Herald.  Like the other performers they are dressed in what might be gay Ancient Greek rock climbing spandex (with a cape of course).They stand silently outside the gates of Thebes waiting.  That is their labour; to do nothing.  To do is to take time off from work!  At some point the Herald becomes encased in a sort of scrim box which allows for some interesting lighting effects (Sebastian Marziali).  At this point we meet herakles i.  They are just finishing up ten years of labours and are thinking of taking a break.  But what would that mean? It’s almost unthinkable so they decide to join Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece.

herakles ii and herakles iii appear and go through variations on the same theme; doing, not doing, time for love, time for sex, waiting, expecting.  It’s both verbal and physical.  The ensemble; all of fluid gender, engage and interact in ways that might or might not be appropriate depending on context but we don’t really know what the context is so, naturally, it generates lots of laughs.  The lighting is evocative, the sound world (Philip Nozuka) loud and somewhat disorienting.

Then Jason (a very large projection) appears and talks of Honour, Respect and other Heroic virtues in a thoroughly masculine way.  The other characters imagine themselves in Shoppers’ Drug Mart pondering the work of Simone Veil and wondering what the purpose of being in SDM is.  All through the “action” there are points where actors address the audience directly.

Quite suddenly it changes pace.  Philosophical reflection is replaced by vigorous counter-marching punctuated by stops and collapsing to the floor; maybe the physical counterpart of working/not working?  A character descends to the Underworld.  And quite suddenly t’s over.

It’s very much an ensemble piece.  William Ellis, a rather imposing Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, Jackie Rowland, Rose Tuong and Fan Wu move seamlessly between roles and modes in a rather impressive way.  

The Herald suggests lots of questions, addresses some of them and provides no answers.  That’s the audiences job.  If indeed there any answers.

The Herald continues at Buddies in Bad Times until March 14th.

Photo credit: Albert Hoang.