Part of the philosophy of the annual STAB season at BATS, funded by Creative New Zealand, is to encourage the development of groundbreaking and original theatre, and while the first play in this year’s season, Flatland, is not wholly successful as a production it is certainly original.

The characters in the play are geometrical figures that inhabit a two-dimensional world referred to as Flatland.  These shapes act as digital puppets, projected on large white sheets across the stage.

The audience is then asked to imagine the unimaginable, what life is like in a two-dimensional world when used to one in 3D.

The play is based on a 1884 satirical novella by Edwin A Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, which made pointed observations on the social structure of Victorian society. This production, designed and created by and directed by Ralph Upton, tries to do likewise with today’s society.

Square is the Father, very effectively animated by Melanie Hamilton with Brigid Costello as the voice. Hexagon is the inquisitive son, both animated and voiced by Thomas LaHood.  LaHood also does the animation and voice for Square’s boss Circle and a group of hooligans called Triangles.

Outside all this is Simon Haren as Sphere, commentating on the action like some dry mathematics professor giving a lecture, trying valiantly to animate as best he can endless lists of unconnected words.

From a technical perspective this is a fascinating production to watch and trying to work out how it’s all done. The lighting design of Uther Dean and sound design of Angus Woodhams are particularly impressive. All that seemed to be missing was the theme tune to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And while there are dramatic moments within the production, in the end Flatland, like its two-dimensional characters fails to connect with any sense of purpose, leaving it like its name sake, flat and uninspiring. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

The introductory sequence in Flatland orientates us to a two-dimensional world then invites us to imagine the unimaginable. And now I feel as if my challenge is to explain the inexplicable, or at least find a way of capturing its nature, without spoiling it – which is unlikely since it is very much a visual, intellectual and at moments emotional experience that each audience member will evaluate differently.

Inspired by English schoolmaster Edwin A Abbot’s Flatland (a novella written in 1884, a full century before Orwell set his portrait of a totalitarian society), this Bats / Stab production cannot be described as an adaptation. Abbot’s novella was an allegory for the social strictures and structures of Victorian society. Men are polygons while women are merely lines, but dangerous to men because when they approach they are just points and therefore able to stab a man if he doesn’t notice her coming.

This iteration – conceived and created by digital designer Johann Nortje and directed by Ralph Upton who co-wrote the text with Alex Lodge through a devising process with the performers – doesn’t get into the gender politics, presumably because they are so last century (yeah right). ‘Now’ in this version is 2012.

The narrator is a Square father, voiced by Brigid Costello and actively animated by Melanie Hamilton to create digital projections, on a hanging curtain screen, of a vertically or laterally expanding and contracting rectangle that reverberates with straight lines on the same plane. Or that’s the idea.

Is it relevant to mention it hardly ever forms a square as such? And that the waviness of the curtain puts wobbles in the lines and actually makes the image three-dimensional so that part of our imagining task is to re-imagine it as flat?

The son of Square is Hexagon, animated and voiced by Thomas LaHood. He goes to school and comes home full of questions for his father, invariably found in the kitchen, including “where do we come from?” But his mother is never mentioned, let alone how it is that a Line procreating with a Square produces a Hexagon (rather than a Pentagon). 

The boss of Square and all the straight-edged shapes is Circle (LaHood), benign but assertive where necessary. And on the periphery of this two-dimensional society are the Triangles (also LaHood), who chant their identity to give themselves a sense of status.

My take is that they’re street kids and when the black-clad and hoodied LaHood and Costello lurk at the sides and beneath the world of the better endowed squares and polygons, and scavenge for goodies, they are being feral Triangles – not that there are any two-dimensional projections at such moments to suggest that, it’s just that when three-dimensional beings become actively involved in this essentially two-dimensional world, my literal brain has to compensate somehow.

Beyond the imaginations of the Flatlanders is Sphere, played by Simon Haren. He is the one who enjoins us to imagine in a way that seems to require us to first imagine we live in a world that does not encourage imagination, at least when we reach adulthood. Or is it that we are required to imagine a world that fears the unknown so that we can then celebrate our capacity to do what we innately do virtually every waking moment of our lives?

By way of proving the value of imaging things into existence, Sphere is given to reciting progressive lists – e.g. from cave art through photography to digital images stored in ‘the cloud’; the stick through sword to modern weapons; etc, etc. (With the progression of explorers, by the way, I think Kupe would be a better starting point than Magellan.)

This contrasts with the rigid containment of Flatlanders within prescribed confines. For me the most compelling element involves Square’s repressing of Hexagon’s inquisitiveness by imposing the “point, line, square – nothing else” mantra only to have it thrown back in his face by his son when he, the father, becomes joyously enlightened thanks to the influence of Sphere. It is this that gives the 70 minutes its dramatic structure and emotional content, for which much thanks.

Technically the two-dimensional projections are interesting, especially as you attempt to work out how they are achieved. And when – as happens a number of times – the line is crossed from the known to the imagined, the chaos that ensues is visually and sonically spectacular. (Click the title above to see the extensive design and production credits.)

The ever-growing blob of three-dimensional substance that follows each ‘revolution’ and is purloined by the underclass is something else again; interpret it as you will.

All four performers commit fully to articulating their concepts and bringing depth to them where they can. From an audience perspective – or mine, anyway – the experience is variously interesting, puzzling, intriguing, frustrating, moving, amusing and tedious, not necessarily in that order. I include “tedious” because of two attenuated sequences that seem indulgent and lead me to wonder who is testing whom and why, or whether it’s just padding to get the show over an hour.

For a show that values imagination, I would have liked to be more imaginatively engaged. Instead I realise my appraisal is relatively objective; more preoccupied with decoding what is unfolding before me and appreciating the historical, social and moral lessons it offers than discovering points of access to further flights of fancy.

Consequently it leaves me feeling curiously flat: unusual for a Stab production.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer