distasteful
by moira de swardt
published by mambaonline
“The Shooting Gallery” pays homage to the work of war photographers. It
is not light entertainment by any means.
This is a high tech production. One enters, avoiding the dead body
clutching a handful of coins, at the entrance, to watch the screen
with the ever changing current news from the internet. The angst
has started. A news editor sits at her desk and lays out the pages.
There is a circle of tealights in front of the screen. Images of
violence fill the screen.
The naked “dead” body is slowly hoisted to form a silhouette in
front of the screen, images now reflecting on the body as well. A
high-pitched whine assaults the ears, even as the images assault one
’s mind. I wonder if the nudity adds anything to the play and
decide it doesn’t. Nudity doesn’t offend me personally, so I don’t
dwell on the issue.
Once the body comes to life, many, many minutes later (the show is
short on action other than violent images) the frenetic pace of the
images gets worse, not better. The body and the character are
obviously two different beings. The character is Jewish. The naked
body isn’t. Even if he does phone home to wish his mother a good
shabbes.
There is some blood, a beaten bucket, a lot of noise and very little
drama. Some graffiti is created at length. It is tedious and not
worth the wait.
The imagery is interesting, shocking, horrible, angst-ridden and
excessive. The drama is gimmicky, clever and uses real-time images
of the audience and e-mail style information, but ultimately it
fails to make a statement stronger than the images.
I was left with a vague sense of distaste rather than disquiet or
discomfort as I left the theatre. The message did not contain
anything which I had been prompted by the show to ponder in depth.
“The Shooting Gallery” with Catherine Henegan and Aryan Kaganof.
Director: Catherine Henegan.
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