On the day of the Christchurch earthquake, this visiting Christchurch Free Theatre company were the epitome of the saying ‘the show must go on’. They were all affected to some degree by what had happened, and added a brief but valid reference to the earthquake. The cast were highly charged rather than distracted in their presentation of this play about how people seek distractions from their mundane lives, and even from imminent danger.

Free Theatre’s work is a million miles from the traditional NZ theatre fare of narrator driven scripts. They have taken Jean Genet’s The Balcony as a starting point and turned it into something related – but ‘other’.

The tango is at the core of this elegantly beautiful work, in part reflecting the way people have flocked to get dancing lessons after shows like Dancing with the Stars. Life is an intricate dance. The tango motif also speaks of human relationships, one moment close and intimate, the next you can find yourselves flung away or you pull away into the arms of another. You can be close to someone then very alone.

Certainly this play is permeated with characters who lack social skills and seek escape in dressing up as powerful figures – bishops, judges, SAS, and tormenting the weak to boost their own flagging self esteem. Their fantasies are playing out in a bordello, albeit and expensive and classy one. It is a comment also on actors which is how they see the women there: “even when they’re taking something off they’re putting something on.”

Distraction Camp starts with a long slow ritual of the dancers cleaning the stage and it quickly becomes mesmerising as they move and breathe. This is a disarming production, it’s a tough 90 minutes, dwelling as it does on relationships and morality, punishment and resilience. The cast is brilliant, the production meticulously acted and choreographed, and in an inspired ending, the audience has to make a choice. 
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Chris Reddington’s setting of red velvet curtains, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, a chandelier, and two tall, metal cages with a bishop’s regalia in one and a judge’s in the other is appropriately voluptuous and theatrical for a brothel called The House of Illusions. It could be anywhere but two CCTV screens showing us the Bats foyer and the street outside anchor it in our world.

Christchurch’s Free Theatre’s Distraction Camp copies, adapts, distorts, and echoes Jean Genet’s famous 1956 play The Balcony. Like Genet’s play Distraction Camp is set in The House of Illusions and contains scenes similar to Genet’s of three clients playing a bishop hearing the confessions of a young woman, a judge punishing a thief, and a Nazi camp commandant training his horse, played by a prostitute, in a cleverly executed pas de deux of dressage.

In The Balcony there is a revolution taking place in the streets and eventually  Genet’s role-players in the brothel are persuaded to act out their roles for real and the play ends with the Madame getting ready to provide more opportunities for people to role play and act out their fantasies of power and sex in a confusion of reality and illusion. She tells the audience to leave by a side door and go home “where everything – you can be quite sure – will be falser than here.”

There’s a revolution of sorts going on in Distraction Camp: a lone Maori protester, artillery weapons on the move, soldiers in paper masks marching through Christchurch and outside The Beehive. It’s all a bit confusing because the screens are small, but we are able to see clearly a tiny street gang getting as far as bashing on the doors at Bats but then quickly dispersing on hearing the voice of the Madame. There’s no danger in this revolution and it’s only in this scene does it really impinge on the action on stage.

The ending is not quite as clear cut as Genet’s though it’s one he might approve of. Reality and illusion unite in an ironical, Pirandellian celebratory finale in which one is invited into the House of Illusions. No discreet side door escape back to your home and your false, dead-end world but a step into this contemporary concentration camp of bloated capitalism and its rewards of ritualistic mind-numbing, distracting bread and circuses.

The production, setting, costumes, and lighting are impressive; the acting and dancing committed and stiffly serious in a very Continental way (there’s quite a bit of tango dancing). But by using Genet’s play Free Theatre is distancing itself from an audience here who may be only vaguely aware of him as a playwright and feel that his allegory is too European or even too old-fashioned and occasionally boring for all its sensationalism. 
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Named to suggest a different kind of concentration camp, Distraction Camp melds the paradoxes inherent in tango (the man’s leading liberates the woman, who gets to shine), with the opening scenes of Jean Genet’s The Balcony (which expose the reliance of church, justice and the military on the flourishing of evil, crime and unquestioning discipline).  

“My premise for the production is provocative,” writes Peter Falkenberg in his director’s Statement: “whereas the experience of the concentration camp was one of scarcity and hunger, the current experience of late capitalism (following Baudrillard in Fatal Strategies) is one of obesity and obscenity, which ironically can be seen to lead to the same effect. Forced endlessly to consume entertainments that revolve endlessly around distractions and commodities, audiences have become like the Muselman, resigned to a way of living without meaning, obese yet starved of real nourishment.” 

I presume he’s talking about free-to-air TV there. It is a question of what we freely subjugate ourselves to. Are we free to choose or are we being manipulated? Are ‘They’ anaesthetising us or are we creating the ‘free market’ for things which do that by demanding them ourselves?

The phenomenon of fetish is at the extreme end of the means by which we either escape ‘reality’ or preoccupy ourselves with some specific part of it.

The first obeisance the eight performers make is to their stage. On their knees, they ritually polish the squat cross, of varnished pine with darker inlays at the centre and around the edges. Muslim prayer and prostration before a pontiff or monarch come to mind …

Accompanied by a haunting cello (Nicole Reddington), soon joined by a portentous piano (Chris Reddington), the slowness of the reverential polishing and its repetition – each one works their way around the entire floor – signals this is serious art. Submit, then, to its different pace.  

At last they don their shoes and tentatively step onto the floor, practising their tango moves, checking each other out, randomly pairing, parting and mixing. There is sensuousness, laughter and a song about how mocking and flamboyant it all is, as they seek some higher state of grace … And because this, too, plays out at a mesmerising pace, I have time to note that the women are in control: the illusion of the strong male leading to enable her flamboyance is missing.

So to the sequences inspired by The Balcony’s ‘House of Illusions’ (a brothel). Two tall cages adorn the stage, one featuring a bishop’s rig, the other that of a judge.

Once more there is ritual in the lighting of the candles by Madame (Greta Bond), and the donning of the robe, surplus, mitre and massive crucifix by the Bishop (Ryan Reynolds). He intones his assumed piety and authority with great resonance as the baby-voiced penitent, Judith (Coralie Winn), confesses her lustful thoughts towards him, compounding her mortal sinning at every turn.

The dripping of candle wax on bare flesh as a penance is as dramatic as the pain it inflicts is illusory. And a spat between Madame and Judith breaks the theatrical illusion too. The long monologue that follows is alleviated by the spectacle of his self-flagellation and the streaming of breaking news on TV monitors, where a protest rally in Civic Square and Parliament grounds – and sometimes in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square – is underway, with blonde (and later white-faced) storm-troopers getting reading to put down the insurrection.

The joys of BDSM set the tone for the scene where the Judge (Simon Troon) first fawns at the feet of Salome (Marian McCurdy) before interrogating her as a thief, as Johanna (Liz Bolt), the ‘executioner’ – all black vinyl and plastic, and aloft on stilts – discovers what’s been snatched in Salome’s snatch (sic) and whips out the punishment: another dramatic illusion.

The Judge’s summing up – about needing an underclass and the crimes they commit in order to have justice – is accompanied by more TV coverage of the civil unrest. And throughout a CCTV camera monitors the Bats Theatre foyer and the roadway beyond the front door.

Genet’s General is now a Camp Commandant (George Parker), which allows the paradox of fetishising Nazi regalia and fascist behaviour to be examined, as he harnesses his ‘horse’ Delilah (Emma Johnston) while recycling Hamlet’s advice to the Players, then puts her through her dressage paces in tangoesque style.

The large mirror that backs the stage – confronting us, the audience, with ourselves – comes into its own here. Hamlet’s “rogue and peasant slave” speech gets a run too, as the Commandant castigates himself for his lack of passion, then a bare-breasted woman in jodhpurs, braces and a Nazi cap German adds a touch of cabaret.

The tango motif is reasserted, interlaced with bon mots – e.g. “I want to be a good girl, not a bad girl”; “There are no good girls, only good actors” – when suddenly the TV screens show a riotous group at the front door, invading the foyer … But the heavy banging at the door is airily dismissed by Madame, the monitors are turned off and we are invited to dance with the performers.

The idea, I expect, is for us to examine our own complicity in ignoring the ‘real world’ while dancing in our own houses of illusion. But of course the real question is whether we embarrass the performers by refusing to play the game or get up and go along with it – and if so, so what? As with Faust Chroma, the ending fails to focus the essence of the play’s thesis but serves as a distraction – which may well be the point, except how many punters will sit down and have a good think about that?

“Are we creating our own House of Illusions in the Free Theatre?” Falkenberg asks. “Is the work we do just another escape, or is it a counter-world to the outside, to the late capitalist, which is a perverted world from our perspective. Do we just escape into a now more nostalgic than utopian illusion, or are we still rehearsing for a revolution, creating another way of living that can catch on and infiltrate the outside world in the way that Artaud envisioned the theatre as a plague?”

Comments responding to his question are welcome, below.

Meanwhile the question that arises for me around the work of Free Theatre is, why preoccupy yourselves with the works of rarely staged European playwrights when you could emulate them better by creating original work that might more immediately impact the world you seek to confront?

That said, I have to add that I left Distraction Camp feeling this could only have come from Christchurch – it’s a piece that somehow speaks directly to the contradictions especially inherent in that fair city – and Wellington theatre is the richer for sharing the puzzlement and pain of that paradox.
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"We are basing the exploration around the theme of unfulfilled (and unfulfillable desire) – a central component in our exploration of the Faust myth – and the physical vocabulary of the Argentine tango……..we are also investigating the themes of "The Balcony"(Jean Genet) as they might seen to translate to our lives here in New Zealand." -Free Theatre 2009

Te Puna o Waiwhetu is the area in which the University Theatre now stands and was known locally as a ‘food bowl, such was the abundance and diversity of food available here. Like its place name, Distraction Camp promises a veritable feast of music, texts, films and images.

Established in 1982, the Free Theatre objectives included the staging of "old and new rarely staged European plays in original translations……in an unusual and experimental style." (Free Theatre notes 2009)

The performance exploration begins before you are even aware of it. A CCTV (Closed circuit television) surveillance camera constantly records the entrance stairwell and door to the theatre. It is not until you enter the theatre that you see the screens that are broadcasting who is entering the theatre door behind you and what they are doing before they enter.

Red velvet, wraps the entire performance area that is dominated by a huge gold and crystal waterfall chandelier and a wall of mirror. The mirror reflects the performance area and the audience seated in front of it. Below is a wooden dance floor on which several pairs of shoes and a cello lie.

Two large bird like cages hang either side of the dance floor, in one are the robes and head-dress of a bishop in the other are a judges wig, chains and manacles. The red velvet drapes extend all the way up both walls of the theatre, enclosing audience and performance area alike. Bouquets festoon the walls and mirrors are also placed on the walls where the audience is seated.

You are at once an observer and the subject of the observation, and it’s like sitting in a red lined chocolate box. You can see the lid opening and closing and are wondering if you will be ‘eaten’ i.e. subject to further close scrutiny or not.

The company, which includes two musicians, enters the performance area and begins in standard black out and the screens are also blank. In unison and to the rhythm of their collective breath, the cast performs a series of floor polishes with velvet cloth, punctuated by a partial yoga stretch. They are joined by the sounds of the cellist and then the piano until all are standing and are circulating in a mass tango.

The company work as one in a seamless flow but as it continues you begin to wonder if you have stumbled into a time before the theatre opened and are in fact witnessing the backstage warm up …

The tango is noted in the helpful theatre programme as a dance that began in the brothels of Argentine. A cursory Internet search spits out the information that the Argentine brothel was one of the few places in which all classes of early 1900s Argentine society met. Musicians were employed to entertain waiting brothel customers and brought with them the latest sounds, and it seems also the latest dances from the Argentine streets.

The company tango is danced with an overall world-weary ennui. The intensity and concentration of the dancers, however, clashes with the tiny dance floor. Body mashes and collisions with walls are inevitable so a series of ‘situations’ flare up and just as quickly are released. 

As the company tango segues into a solo song the work then continues into the exploration of the ‘Balcony’ text by Genet.

World-premiered in 1957 London, this work, like the original text, is set in a world where a riot and coup of the government are imminent outside; ‘safely’ locked inside, we are witness to what we finally work out are the inner workings of a brothel.

Unlike the original, our brothel is set firmly in 2009 Christchurch. The screens blaze into life and send a loop of Christchurch images outside and a stream of CNN like text across the bottom of the screen. A constant flow of infotainment-like updates on the start of the riot brewing around us is ‘broadcast’. It includes references to, but does not name, the Hone Harawira email and also Whanganui Mayor Michael Laws.

On stage, a pedophile bishop leads his child confessor into admitting and then committing sins with him. The power roles are reversed when the madam appears and runs the ‘bishop’ out of the room as time is then up and the ‘child’ is revealed as a working prostitute.

The madam dresses her staff and then brings out a camera operator who is instructed to film "lots of low angles: he likes to look powerful."

The camera close-up of the characters on the screen should have aided to the action of the live ‘wide-shot’ being played out before us. Unfortunately in the 2009 media-crazed world the camera shots were a nuisance as the camera angles presented were not composition perfect, like those readily accessible at any Crusaders game at AMI stadium.  

A man and two women then take us through the politics of crime in a bondage scene involving a judge, a criminal and a dominatrix. The roles are reversed and exchanged so the dominant becomes the submissive and vice versa, until all blurs. Leaving us wondering, like the characters themselves, who has the power?

The third and final scenario is that of the Nazi commandant with his bound, beaten and thonged up woman who becomes his prancing, trotting and ridden horse.  He in turn is brought to heel by a combination of the madam of the establishment and the dreamlike appearance of the embodiment of his Aryan wet dream. A blonde topless Diva in his beloved Nazi outfit singing in the language of the Fatherland overcomes him. Her song becomes her weapon of domination over him.

The camera moves among the now-resigned audience at will, showing them on the screens. No-one (on opening night) even flinches at the camera’s proximity or the reproduction of their images on stage.  

The exploration of power as discussed through this text shows its age. The inherent misogynistic representation of whore, virgin and crone of Genet was in addition exhaustingly nihilistic. Did we need to be dragged through this beautifully staged version of the bowels of our inhumane humanity? Were we the real House of Illusions?

As the commandant is evicted from the brothel and ultimately the theatre, my companion and I just want to leave the theatre with him. The screens flick to outside CCTV. We watch enviously as he leaves and then bolts us in.  

The surprise comes too late for us to care. As the tango resumes on stage and audience members are invited to join in the dance, we leave quickly. Outside the door, remnants of the surprise end litter the steps in a deft touch.

Running at just on 90 minutes it is not the time spent in the theatre that is tiring, rather it is the didactic, repetitive and depressing nature of the source text. This beautifully staged and professionally realized production brings to mind a quote by Nietzsche: "Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves. "
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