THEATRE: Hazel Friedman
Picture yourself on a boat on the river with tangerine pearls and marshmallow eyes (or something to that effect) and you’ll begin to get the gist of Oxygen by Art Attack, Lara Foot Newton’s contribution to the age of rave.
Add a couple of Es to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and surf beyond the Sixties subculture into the new-age Nineties. Brush up on your bible, get reacquainted with Greek mythology, and practise some obligatory rave dancing rites and you’ll be well-equipped to appreciate the finer points of this opera without lyrics.
In other words, Oxygen — like its central protagonist Joanna Weinberg — is a “beautiful flower”. But like the dysfunctional electronic signboard which serves as a subtitle for lyrics and dialogue, this multi- media production is slightly scattered, with a tendency to run amok.
A combination of biblical parable (Cain and Abel) and Greek myth (Romulus, Remus and Oedipus), as well as a treatise on Sixties hippiedom and Nineties homelessness, Oxygen clearly aims to embark on a cross-cultural intergalactic rave.
This it certainly does, providing some theatrical gems along the way, before losing its audience on the freeway between intention and execution.
With vibey musical interludes played by Barry van Zyl and Stephen Dryer, nimble performances from Weinberg, Joshua Lindberg, Zenzi Mbuli and Brian Webber, Oxygen proves that speech is not essential for effective communication.
Using mime, movement and burlesque, it attempts to unite a variety of theatre genres within a rave kaleidoscope, and almost succeeds. But not quite. For one thing, while speech certainly isn’t a prerequisite for quality theatre, disciplined direction most certainly is. It is in this terrain that Oxygen literally gasps for breath.
Foot Newton has tried to throw too many ingredients into the rave pot and has produced a tongue-numbing concoction that lands up saying too little about everything.
Although her intention is clearly to provide multi-sensory fragments, as opposed to a coherent cultural narrative, her comic touch becomes a little heavy-handed about an hour into the 75-minute production. By this stage, the techno gimmickry and meandering storyline begin to look a little worn.
But with some pruning, Oxygen may well sow the seeds for a new theatre “flower”, one that will integrate art, music, movement and the whole pantheon of consciousness-enhancing (or numbing) substances into a coherent, truly synaesthetic theatre rave.
Oxygen by Art Attack runs at the Laager at the Market until May 11