Circa’s new show should be impossible in a pandemic but it’s on anyway
In a pandemic when we are all social distancing a mass circus show seems an anachronism, but Circa’s Leviathan is COVID safe and a great escape for audiences forced to sit far apart from each other.
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In the middle of a pandemic with social distancing now the norm, Circa is putting on a show that features people crawling all over each other on stage at the Playhouse at QPAC. WTF? How can this be?
Oh it be people, it be and don‘t worry, the cast of Leviathan may be all over each other like a rash but Circa is operating under government-approved COVID safe plans. They tell me they are “rigorous and compliant” and there’s a lot of temperature taking, hand sanitising and making sure anyone who is not well stays at home and gets tested. Nobody getting tested can return to the show before they get results.
That said it’s still a miracle that the show is on at all and it’s the theatrical and intellectual meat a lot of us crave at a festival. Artistic director Yaron Lifschitz told me before Friday night’s opening performance that anyone expecting a frivolous, lighthearted show would be disappointed. This show is, he told me, is a meal, not dessert.
It’s a hearty meal too with 36 performers on stage drawn from Circa’s own troupe with additions from Circa Zoo, the company’s performance program for talented young people and from QUT.
It’s a meal, with numerous courses and a satisfying one on an aesthetic and intellectual level. Lifschitz is masterful with his compositions and while there is remarkable physicality on view somehow he manages to imbue his works with an intellectual depth that satisfies and challenges. And so he has created a masterpiece, if an imperfect one. There are flaws within the glass but that only endears it to us as an audience.
Lifschitz says in his program note that an almost “unfathomable complexity is the basis of Leviathan” and I’m glad to read that because yes, it is almost unfathomable. But on an intuitive level you understand it even if that is hard to put into words.
Watching it you can see his thought processes working in the movements and feats of strength and skill on display. This is not just an acrobatic work either, it becomes a contemporary dance piece at times and at others it seems like some performance art work en masse. His ideas of people working together, of a society made up of individuals co-operating seems to be a the core of the work and this was all dreamt up before the pandemic. Now, it couldn’t be more relevant considering where we are at as a society.
The complexity of directing and choreographing with 36 bodies in constant motion can’t be easy but somehow it all works. Often Lifschitz indulges himself with his soundtrack using recognisable music to connect but this time the soundscape, a new composition by Owen Belton, is unfamiliar. At times it’s like listening to an amplified heart beating or blood flowing through a body and the sonorous tones resonate and activate the grey matter.
The show starts whimsically with two feet poking out from the curtain and then we are faced with the child clown figure that book ends the show adding a note of absurdity.
Lifschitz wanted to make a big group show for Brisbane Festival and this is it. It had an out of town tryout in Perth earlier this year but Brisbane was always meant to be its home and Circa is our internationally renowned company. So we’re glad it was able to be put on here even though at times it seems almost shocking to see people so physically close on stage while the audience is sparsely populated with plenty of empty seats to keep us apart.
Shocking but also cathartic and we can live a little vicariously through watching this show which is on until next weekend. Be thankful if you have tickets because all upcoming shows are sold out.
If you do see it you will understand how weird it is to see this sometimes heaving mass of humanity on stage. Weird but rather wonderful.
brisbanefestival.com.au