Review: ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2016: DELUGE Will Keep You Alert Following The Conversations

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Wednesday 9th March 2016

A new company, Tiny Bricks, in partnership with Brink Productions and in association with the Adelaide Festival of Arts, is presenting its first production, Deluge, initially presented at the National Play Festival in 2015 after two years of development.

The production looks at information overload and began with thoughts of trying to work, with a television running, and somebody trying to hold a conversation all at the same time. The work does not have a narrative, it has five. In effect, there are five plays running at the same time, as though we are listening in on five connections on the Internet.

To quote the press release, "Two strangers conceive a child in a one-night stand and spend the next few months getting to know each other. A young man delivers a prophetic speech he hopes will change the world. An online game takes a deadly turn and becomes frighteningly real. A US soldier in the middle of Iraq has a dark secret to share. A young woman's life spirals out of control as she searches for absolution in God."

Designer, Elizabeth Gadsby, presents us with a huge tank filled with white polystyrene foam cubes, around which the audience is seated. Above this tank is a complex string of LED lights that constantly changes, with the lighting design by Chris Petridis. When the work begins the actors emerge from the foam as far as their upper bodies, such as you might see in a Skype video chat. They have logged on. Broken conversations begin, for, of course, it takes time to read a message and type a reply.

From then on, we do our best to follow all of the conversations competing for our attention. Occasionally the pressure is relieved a little as people disappear below the foam blocks. They have logged off, sometimes with a farewell and sometimes just vanishing, to the annoyance of their partner in the conversation.

Sometimes the conversations happen individually, one person speaking in the gaps between other conversations. At other times, several people might be speaking at the same moment. Surprisingly, though, one finds it possible to keep up with all that is happening, at least, sufficiently to keep track, if not pick up every detail. It seems that some of us have adapted to information overload, to a degree.

Writer, Phillip Kavanagh, and director, Nescha Jelk, are responsible for constructing this fascinating work in this way, enabling the audience to absorb enough of each of the interactions to maintain a level of understanding of each of them

I suspect that many of us who deal with the situation daily can cope with, for instance, writing a review, having a couple of people in chat asking if you can review their shows, or arranging a guest to take to a production, and having the television or radio running, or perhaps answering the telephone or reading and sending text messages, whilst still writing. Whether I could cope with that if I wasn't doing it every day, however, is doubtful.

Alex Woollatt, Andrew Thomas, Antoine Jelk, Ashton Malcolm, Eliza Oliver, James Smith, Julie Nixon, Lucy Lehmann, Rebecca Mayo, and Stuart Fong are the actors in this complex production and, I am sure, have had to work very hard to bring it all together. They offer universally great performances.

The work runs for around fifty minutes, and that is quite enough. Any more would exhaust the audience, but it is sufficient to make its point, and to provide an insight into the lives and ideas of these ten characters. This is well worth a visit.

Learn more about this work here.

Photo credit: Ché Chorley, Adelaide Festival of Arts

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