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Sodome, My Love
| Opening Date |
16 March 2010 |
| Closing Date |
27 March 2010 |
| Time |
7.30pm |
| Director |
Lynne Parker |
| Writer |
Laurent Gaudé |
| Cast |
Olwen Fouéré |
| Ticket Price |
€15 - €25 |
Venue
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Space Upstairs
Project Arts Centre
39 East Essex Street
Temple Bar
Dublin 2 |
| Phone |
(01) 881 9613 |
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Last days of the debauched.
Olwen Fouéré is one of those people who is never as tall as you remember. Having previously seen her commanding the stages of Dublin with a startling physical presence, the opening scenes of Sodome, My Love come as quite a shock. Barefoot, drained of all colour, her clothes, skin and hair a uniform white, Fouéré sits twisted into a tiny curled-up claw, her body seemingly atrophied and incapable of action. Her face is obscured from view, but a video projection on stage shows it is virtually a death mask. When she speaks, it’s hard to tell if the voice comes from the actress or the PA system, but either way the sound seems dragged out from somewhere very far away. The effect is disconcerting, but then Fouéré gradually unfolds herself and her story, and with it develops again that powerful aura which leaves me convinced she’s actually seven feet tall.
The tale itself is of the last survivor of the city of Sodom, memorably annihilated by God when its inhabitants got a bit too frisky. Fouéré is that survivor, and alternates between thoughts of the pleasures the city once provided and the chaos and contagion that reigned during its destruction. The two memories are intermingled in the body of a visiting Ambassador, whose physical beauty leads the citizens of Sodom into bed with him – there to be infected by an unknown and deadly sexually transmitted disease. The only woman to escape the plague is buried in salt by the Ambassador’s cohorts, her body suffocated but preserved for centuries. As the play begins she is awakened by a rainfall, and comes to discover that her desires too have escaped the salt intact.
Translated by Fouéré herself from a previously unproduced French piece, the play is anchored by her remarkable performance but aided and abetted by John Comiskey’s superb production design. The stage floor is coated in tiny pebbles, bringing to mind both the wildness of beaches and the studied order of a Zen stone garden. In addition to that giant thawing face, the video projection gives us walls filled with passing car lights and subway trains weirdly climbing up rather than across them. Every element of design has been carefully considered to add weight and depth to the play, and indeed it is hard to imagine it surviving in less skilful hands. The text deals almost exclusively with the ambiguity and duality of sexuality and our reactions to it, only to throw all that away in a trite, ill-conceived conclusion. Fouéré’s character has finally unfurled from her corroded beginnings, and become again something like her former self. Ready to enter the world once more, she dons heels, shades, a belted black mac and Louise Brooks wig, while a loop of clips of scantily clad women from adverts and TV plays in the background.
It is supposedly an illustration of the displaced and debased nature of sexuality in today’s world, but reads more like parody than serious comment on society. Indeed, from my seat at the front of the theatre I could see the waiting pair of Crocs the actress had presumably been wearing before she stepped on stage – a contrast to the ultra high heels the character wears, and a potent reminder that divorcing sexuality from everyday reality actually undermines the play’s point. However with a performer and collaborators of this calibre the experience as a whole is the thing, and Sodome, My Love makes for a striking and indelible evening.
- Charis Hughes |
