Latest Reviews

Photos - Prudence Upton

Be warned, Fabulous Beast’s Giselle is nothing like any Giselle you may have seen before. While it has references to its namesake and centres around a betrayed female named Giselle, this part theatre, part dance work unpacks so many more and various facets of love and betrayal than the formal histrionics of the romantic ballet ever do. This Giselle is ugly, creepy and downright weird and it hits you in the guts for 70 continuous minutes. And you won’t be forgetting it soon afterwards either. It is testament to choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and his committed performers, who not only dance superbly, but also have to go to very dark places to bring the characters to life, that Giselle communicates both crudeness and beauty, sadness and humour and, ultimately, forgiveness.

Located in a generic Irish midland town and with characters as gothic as any you’d find in the darkest, most twisted artworks (Annie Prouix’s oddball cowboys and desolate Montana, USA settings come to mind) Giselle exposes an underbelly as raw as a fresh open wound. Like a gruesome car crash, you want to look away, but something draws you to keep watching.

The characters are all deprived, obscene or repressed and the international cast plays them with farce, pathos, slapstick and everything in between. They tell their stories through text-based vignettes shifting into dance and interspersed with a recurring Irish song that performers sing live. It’s so brilliantly woven together that not a moment is wasted and not an image unnecessary.

From atop a lone electricity pole, an old man (Bill Lengfelder) narrates the tormented story of his daughter Giselle (Daphne Strothmann), who lost her powers of speech after her ballet-obsessed mother committed suicide on Christmas Day. He speaks as an informed insider looking from outside, almost a godlike figure, and gives us back stories on the main players in Giselle’s miserable world. This device is effective and visually evokes a sense of isolation, remoteness and disengagement.

There’s Giselle’s mentally-damaged brother Hilarion (a convincingly manic Michael Dolan) who treats Giselle like an animal, caging her, spitting on her and abusing her with incestuous overtones. Pat Dunne, the butcher’s son (Neil Paris), is having a lustful affair with the corpulent, bald and nasty Nurse Mary (played with great zeal by Mikel Murfi) whose daughter Fat Mary (again played by a male – Vladislav Soltys) taunts Giselle with nasty delight. Even odder is Albrecht, the bisexual line dancing teacher from Bratislava (Milos Galko) who ultimately betrays Giselle’s love and trust by having cheap sex with Pat Dunne outside the local pub. 

Each character is creepier than the next, and they expose many layers of a disturbed small village society. They talk, hurt each other and copulate in the crudest of fashions, using the simplest of costumes and props to build setting and mood. Embellished by composer Philip Feeney’s sinister and screechy sounds, an offbeat humour – the country western inspired line dancing sequences in bright cowboy boots, Pat Dunne’s infomercial advertising for his butcher shop, the orgasmic grunts of Nurse Mary astride a supine Dunne on his chopping block - plays throughout the action and always hits the mark. 

When Gisele dies of grief and madness and shifts to the world of the Wilis, Keegan-Dolan forgoes words and lets dance speak for itself. An ensemble of ghosts (male and female) emerges from below stage, fingers and hands stretching menacingly out of coffin-shaped trap doors. They swing from ropes, their bodies messy with white powder and enmesh Giselle in swinging acrobatics. The transition to pure movement and a total change of tone is natural and right, like a much needed calm after a storm.  

A post-modern mash up like this could be a real dog’s breakfast and suffer from too many elements and characters, but Giselle is quite the opposite. Everything weaves together fluidly and the piece moves from the ridiculous to the sublime, with amazing grace. Keegan-Dolan and his company of diverse performers have created something surprisingly stirring – so grotesque and absurd, yet also redemptive and truthful. Unlike so many works made in a similar manner, Giselle is not shocking or gimmicky for the sake of it. Within all the mayhem, the work feels honest and real. 


Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre
Giselle
Part of the 2010 Sydney Festival

Director Michael Keegan-Dolan

Venue: CarriageWorks Bay 17 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh
Preview: January 20 at 8pm
Season: January 22, 23, 25 at 8pm; January 24, 26 at 5pm
Duration: 1hr 20mins no interval
Tickets: $75 / $60
Bookings: Ticketmaster 1300 723 038
Web: www.sydneyfestival.org.au/giselle

Please note: This work is not suitable for children