The Jewish Talmud tells us that Adam was originally created as a golem, the word meaning incomplete or unfinished. It is with Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the rabbi of Prague in the 16th century, though, that the myth became famous, with many ways to shape, animate and control a golem following this initial exposure. A golem is made by fashioning mud into a roughly human form and bringing it to life, perhaps by incantations or by placing one of the names of god on a piece of paper, a shem, and placing it in the statue's mouth or embedding it in the forehead. One of the drawbacks to the golem was that, to begin with, it could not talk.
This is taken and used, albeit in a transformed narrative, in Golem, from the company 1927. 1927 co-produced the work with the Salzburg Festival, Theatre de la Ville Paris, and Young Vic, with funding from the Arts Council England.
Created by the company, the production is directed and written by Suzanne Andrade, who also provides some of the voiceovers, while the voice of the golem is provided by Ben Whitehead. The work is performed by Esme Appleton, Lillian Henley, Rose Robinson, Shamira Turner, and Will Close, interacting with projected video combining handmade animation and claymation, well, it is a clay golem, so what else would you use? The imaginative animation and design are byPaul Barritt, co-founder of 1927 with Suzanne Andrade.
The five performers do a remarkable job, switching costumes hair and makeup time and again to create all of the different characters, each one as quirky as the last. The way that they interact with the animation is marvellous, giving it a level of reality by their own acceptance of it as a part of the reality of their characters.
This is an enormously technical work. The positioning of the performers is crucial, or the illusion that they are connected to the videos would be lost. This requires enormous skill and, no doubt, countless hours of intensive rehearsal. The combination of the live and video performances is impeccable. Nobody could have faulted this performance.
Considering the high level of technology involved it seems incongruous that, at least, to begin with, the cartoon caricature voices had a degree of echo imposed on them that made them difficult to understand, especially as they were also getting lost beneath the music. Eventually, things improved, but there were still bits missed here and there. Hopefully, this will be addressed by the next performance.
The very diverse musical score for this piece is by Lillian Henley, who plays keyboard on one extreme side of the stage, in conjunction with Will Close on drums and assorted percussion, located on the opposite side, creating effects as well as providing rhythm.
Robert lives with his sister, Annie, and Grandma. He works as a binary coder, backing up the backup. His lack of enthusiasm for his work reflects its mundane character. He and his co-workers are automatons, mindlessly performing their tasks and telling jokes in binary numbers to pass the time. He is a loser, friendless, and a nerd, a fatal combination for any possibility of a social life. His inventor friend Phil has failed in a number of businesses but has come up with a new one. He has found a way to make a golem. Robert buys one, seeing many advantages, the first being that the creature can do his work for him.
Eventually, the golem starts to talk, an upgrade, but if Robert owns and controls the golem, who is accessing it? It is not long before the golem fails catastrophically but wait, along comes golem 2. Now, things really start to get worrying. This section seemed a little long and, from the fidgeting and whispering around me, others appear to have thought so, too. Perhaps a slight trim would be in order. Golem 3, however, took leaps and bounds forward.
Although a warning about our reliance on, and interaction with technology, we could also interpret this as the influence of big business, the media, employers, the banking industry, and governments on our lives and thinking. They are doing the same insidious things that the golem does in this work. Ironically, the foyer was filled with people checking their mobile phones immediately after the performance. It seems they missed the point somewhat.
This is definitely a production that will appeal to a wide range of people and the audience tonight included what appeared to be classes of high school students as well as people of considerably more advanced ages. I suspect that tickets, if there are any left, will soon go.
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Photo Credit: Bernhard Mueller
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