It was just a few years ago, when the New Theatre of Riga performed Alvis Hermanis' play Long Life in a revelatory staging at the Trafó. We got a peek into the lives of old people, crammed, yet separated in their small flats, in a humorous and lyrical, movingly beautiful performance without words. Now the rooms are still the same, perhaps even the people, but the era is different: the second half of the 60s. The characters are young people entering adulthood, going through their first experiences of love or disappointment, fighting with their feelings and probably caring much less about what's happening in the world around them. We do not see much of '68. Only through a few comments do we get to know that others had very different kinds of problems at the time. Even though the costumes, the majority of objects, the music (by Simon and Garfunkel) and many other cultural references link the play to the era, what happens to the characters is ageless.
The Sounds of Silence: A concert that never was by Simon and Garfunkel in Riga in 1968 is a performance without spoken words, the same as Long Life. The actors' work is based on gestures, expressions and movements. The members of the troupe - Guna Zarina, Sandra Zvigule, Inga Alsina, Liena Smukste, Iveta Pole, Regina Razuma, Jana Civzele, Gatis Gaga, Kaspars Znotins, Edgars Samitis, Ivars Krasts, Varis Pinkis, Girts Krumins, Andris Keiss - use nonverbal means to convey innumerable nuances of feeling. This makes the performance difficult to analyse, because it offers many starting points of interpretation, yet its essence, the secret of its power, is almost impossible to express in words.
Regardless, it is worth taking note of the precise and well thought-out composition that characterises Hermanis's direction. The play's framework, the fine interplay with time, the very simple and obvious mixing of realism and surrealism (for instance when a character appears from the pages of a book and mixes with "real" characters in the play), the consistent reappearance and combination of seemingly disparate motives and ideas, and the conversion of everyday objects and tools into symbols (such as the consumption of milk used as a narcotic), and an all-encompassing elementary playfulness (including a fake cow and a plush elephant that bears the slogan "make love not war") are all to be lauded. The ideas brought to the stage are memorable: A feather rises from a book and the characters keep it hovering above them by blowing it; the characters play music with glass jars; clumsy new fathers search for their babies and end up mixing them up; a telephone wire entangles lovers; and a couple making love forget to remove their helmets.
The performance is not at all short, yet this reviewer could have watched for longer.
Author: Balázs Urbán / Photo: Bárka Theatre
