On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco sees the much-anticipated collaboration between the Featured Artist for 2014, Sylvaine Strike, and theatre giant Andrew Buckland. The synthesis of Strike and Buckland’s remarkable talent and imaginative power has resulted in a powerful theatrical experience.
On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco sees the much-anticipated collaboration between the Featured Artist for 2014, Sylvaine Strike, and theatre giant Andrew Buckland. The synthesis of Strike and Buckland’s remarkable talent and imaginative power has resulted in a powerful theatrical experience.
The performance veritably moves beyond the realm of language as Strike weaves together the stuff of dreams, the ghastly present, the terrible tricks of memory and the enduring music of love and its loss. One leaves the theatre breathless and only able to muster, at best, a nervous giggle – like the first sound uttered by the jittery figure that Buckland brings to life.
The audience is captivated by the “misunderstood, unlucky” figure of Ivan (Andrew Buckland) from the moment he saunters on stage to deliver a lecture on the harmful effects of tobacco. The character enthrals his audience with facts and revelations, and eternally delays any real information on tobacco’s dangers.
Like much of the work in Strike’s prolific repertoire, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco harnesses the captivating power of classical mime and clowning traditions to explore the character’s turmoil. In Buckland, the director finds her ideal clown whose vulnerability, playfulness and ineptitude leave the audience in stitches, while saturating the entire experience with a tender and haunting magic.
Buckland delivers the performance of a lifetime in a work that demands a superhuman physical and vocal discipline. The audience can expect to be delighted by his characteristic physical comedy routines and charming sincerity. However, the comic ritual between Ivan and the audience begins to unravel and the faint, sad music beneath his ramblings find beautiful expression in Buckland’s physical gestures and his unique manipulation of words in order to create a poignant portrait of human longing, need and desperation.
The actor practises huge restraint in developing a rhythm to accompany Ivan’s ritual of mourning, its inherent violence driving mercilessly towards the last moments when Buckland remains squirming on his back, “unable to round off the gesture” of his life.
The staging of this remarkable text by William Harding attests to Strike’s unique approach to making theatre. She creates innumerable imaginative possibilities for the audience to explore through the sophisticated manipulation of set pieces. The staging for this “lecture” is foreseeably sparse, and vaguely reminiscent of Beckett.
However, the mandatory lectern undergoes a ritual of its own – becoming a womb, a cage, a home, a monstrous burden, a totem pole and the vessel for all of Ivan’s experiences. Toni Morkel beautifully and sensitively accompanies Buckland as Ivan’s wife, and Strike’s staging choices in relation to this character are superb. Throughout the play, the space comes alive in surprising ways and it acquires the quality of a marvellous Surrealist painting or a dream only half-remembered.
This story was originally published on Cue Online – cue.ru.ac.za
