Macondo’s Clothesline

A Fallen Woman

This fifty minute presentation of improvised movement-centric performance was inspired by a micro-tale from Gabriel García Márquez, hence the name of this brand new theatre company. A woman is falling, maybe she’s committing suicide or maybe she’s just another Alice falling down another rabbit hole. As she falls she experiences some of the fundamental pleasures and terrors of life; friendship, work, food, sex, music and dance, as well as exclusion, drudgery, deprivation, isolation, speechlessness and confinement. Maybe life is worth living, maybe not. You have to take the journey to discover the beauty and grotesqueness of your surroundings. Then it ends.

The thread that links this series of visually interesting movement, dance and musical vignettes is the clothesline strung across the stage, perhaps representing the story arc of the play. Apart from the laundry, what is on show in this show are some little gems, a few rough nuggets and the occasional dull pebble. Whilst these diverse little bites are often captivating, sometimes amusing and occasionally stunning, they do tend to exist in isolation to any connecting story. The stereotypical characters are roughly drawn as we progress, but no real story emerges, other than we are on a rather perilous journey and the end point is unknown. As the stakes were unclear the tension did not escalate and the ending came as more of a full stop than a conclusion. And what really confounded me was, given its’ Latin roots, why were the inhabitants of Macondo speaking with Russian accents and incessantly smoking ‘air cigarettes’. 

The play was well performed, costumed, set and lit. A stand out was the excellent synchronisation of live music by Matt Thomson, lights and sound from Erin Harvey and the movement, dance and occasional singing from the actors. This is a work still in development and with some strengthening of the story, clarity of characterisation and greater precision of movement this production has considerable potential. They are a company to watch.

Stephen Carnell