Reviews of Witkacy Idiota

19 August 2005

Absurd person's singular art
A triumph of invention

ON A Fringe full of hard-faced analyses of personal and global politics, and then again of desperate showbiz efforts to entertain, it's a sheer joy to come across a performance so sweetly, confidently and unashamedly absurdist as this fine 70-minute tribute to the life and work of the troubled Polish artist, playwright and thinker, Stanislaw Witkiewicz.

Witkacy, as he called himself, was a pioneer of the avant-garde - a forerunner of Genet, Beckett and Brecht - who died just as German troops were marching into Poland in 1939. This show takes the form of a double-act between the brilliant Scottish actor Sandy Grierson, as Witkacy, and a white-coated figure, played by director/creator David W Johnstone, who might be a kindly doctor trying to help him, or perhaps a fatherly alter-ego, who listens and reacts while Witkacy expounds his theory of "pure form", and his revulsion against the idea that art should be about anything at all, except itself.

Johnstone's Lazzi company, who present the show, describe their remit as being "improvisation, abstraction, surrealism, intensity, commedia, slapstick, joy"; and all those are present in a simple but surprisingly beautiful-looking show that makes powerful use of coloured light, shadow and movement to lead us through some key aspects of Witkacy's life, from his troubled childhood, through his heroic consumption of drink and drugs, to his horror of war and eventual death.

The heart and soul of the show, however, lies in Grierson's superbly athletic, charismatic and touching central performance as a painfully fragile but somehow powerful artist, an innocent abroad in a world of naturalism and literalism who utterly refuses the artistic conventions of his day, lives intensely and painfully, and dies in obscurity; but who leaves behind a taste, a flavour, an attitude to the world, and a sense of the radical possibilities of art, that cannot be entirely extinguished.

Three Weeks 28 August 2005

Like waking up with your head inside a washing machine and a pair of rainbow socks going round and round, this play shakes you up with its frenzied energy, extraordinary imagination and complete and utter insanity. Taking a look at the life of avant-garde Polish artiste Witkacy, you are projected into a state of surrealism where nothing is clear and everything absurd. Immersed in psychoses, this play moves you away from theatrical realism into one where anything can happen. Superb and mesmerising performances, particularly by the actor playing Witkacy, take this up a notch from complete madness. And at least if you're a little baffled, you've got some fantastic physical theatre to entice you. Intense and abstract, this is certainly unique. [aa]