Are we not drawn onward to new erA

It seems Belgian performance troupe, Ontroerend Goed, likes a clever joke and a play on words.

The mystery is, those sparse words in Are we not drawn onward to new erA might be in a Moomin-like language, clownish gibberish or Flemish and we don’t have the knowledge at the start of the 70-minute show, to be in on the joke.

However, be patient during a few quiet, slow-paced scenes, where an apple is eaten; plastic bags rain from the sky and the troupe work together to construct some kind of icon, because they will set you up with that knowledge. 

Enjoy watching the troupe moving in weirdly choreographed ways and be confident that by about the 30-minute mark, you will know how to translate that language.

Your focus on the performers will now gain you great humour, empathy, and enjoyment from looking back on what came before.

Clues may entice you in the title – it can be read from either the start or the finish - a literary devise called a palindrome.

You may experience a similar tingle when predicting the possible punchline of a joke, which is now funnier because of your prior shared knowledge.

An image also came to mind of a “Coles Funny Picture Book” puzzle where, at first, you see the wolf, but when you look at the drawing upside down, the illusion of Red Riding Hood is revealed.

The players are uniformly balanced and egalitarian, as no one actor upstages another; the sign of a true ensemble.

Their exaggerated gestures and loud exclamations that seem over the top in the first half, when viewed through a slightly different lens, now make perfect sense.

That growing sense of awareness, shared with other audience members and their spontaneous bursts of laughter or applause, is what makes this very theatrical experience so satisfying.

And surely, I was not the only person sitting there becoming very distressed by the slow, precise destruction of a live sapling before our very eyes.

Simple and clever multi-media effects (Light, Video & Sound by Jeroen Wuyts & Babette Poncelet) help us solve the narrative puzzle.

Music by William Basinski slowly creeps in, adding to our emotional response.

Even though the stage is eventually cluttered with plastic, man-made structures, and finally breath-choking smoke, we are left with an uplifting and hopeful message, which may be our call to action.

If humans bother to look at our environment through the opposite end of the telescope, and make small changes, we can turn the tide of our destruction around.

Are we not drawn onward to new erA entertains us with a totally original and unique theatrical experience, to be reflected upon and savoured.

Jane Keehn

Photographer: Mirjam Devriendt