Classic Drama with Bubbles

Karin and Arlo are friends, says the show promo. Karin McCracken and Arlo Gibson are extraordinary performers, says this reviewer. We get just what is promised: wrestling matches, stand-up comedy and throwback tunes on a tape-deck. But we get so much more.

We witness a competition. The rules are never stated and the complicity is high. Like the best of show wrestling, there is feeling that everything has been agreed. Yet, each time Arlo looks about to throw Karin, the floor’s hardness, the concrete walls and the delicate hostess trolley nearby all make the potential for damage seem very near at hand. Either side of the wrestling floor is a mic on a stand.

Between bouts, each performer delivers repartee that digs deep into the sex and violence that is the meat of Greek myth. They give us informed and eloquent no-holds-barred explorations of the cruelty and passions embedded in the worlds of Medea and Minos. Each time the wrestling recommences, the patina of the ancient world rubs up against the more familiar sphere of pop. The performers grapple to cassette recordings of dancing tunes. There are battles occurring: he against she; Arcadia with MTV; care versus risk. Overall, the gender conflict came most to view for me. Not just because the performers are from each sex, but also because the Greek world of vengeful couples taking retribution is the core of the stand-up competition: who can best champion their myth’s importance. Beyond this understanding, maybe too simple, there is also a delicate dance of fragility and resilience.

The performers both take care of each other as well as both making sure the danger edge is ever there in each act. This is rendered vivid when they swig champagne then play a game with their glass flutes that promises shattering sharp shards everywhere. If I could speak to the direction, my note would be to ensure systematic creation of live art such as this is followed by complex montaging of the actions discovered. I’d like to see the facets all again, not in their methodical progression, but in a more kaleidoscopic order.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

There’s a large black square mat in front of us. A small table sits behind it, with a bottle of champagne, two glasses, and a tape deck on top.

Karin McCracken and Arlo Gibson enter the sparsely designed space, both donned in workout gear and knee-pads, and we wait for someone to speak. The anticipation builds while they utilise the deck to play the 70s banger ‘Come and Get your Love’.

Shoulder shimmies turn into full-scale dad-dancing and I feel a smile spread across my face: here is Director Julia Croft’s signature style, redolent of her 2019 production Working On My Night Moves – carefully curated standout tracks and choreographed movements coax the audience to happiness, movement and enjoyment. [More]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Standard Acts is a devised piece by a team of artistic kindred spirits. The four artists credited with creating it – Julia Croft, Meg Rollandi, Karin McCracken, and Arlo Gibson – have all been been making ambitious experimental works over the past decade or so.

McCracken and Croft have previously collaborated on 2017’s Body Double, Rollandi (with Isobel MacKinnon) on 2018’s Actual Fact, Rollandi and Croft on 2019’s Power Ballad: Working On My Night Moves, McCracken (with Eleanor Bishop) on 2019’s YES YES YES. They’ve all tended to focus on similar themes: feminism, sexuality, a bit of applied metaphysics.

It’s the most natural of partnerships. What they’ve created now is a striking, tightly focused play, ambitious but not dense. It portrays a single dynamic between characters named Karin and Arlo, expressed primarily through a repeated game of wrestling. They play literally hundreds of matches, and [spoiler alert] Arlo wins every time.

Arlo is full of desperately nervous enthusiasm, while Karin is cool and calm, responding to each defeat with a genuinely relaxed smile. Is she admirably determined, or just stupid? She seems smart. Arlo’s motivations are just as enigmatic – he seems constantly insecure in his own victory, even when it’s assured. On the surface, all we can see is a couple of friends playing a game.

This dynamic, however memorable, can only achieve so much nuance in such a limited situation. This is mitigated by the commentary of a few spoken sections. These are delivered in very typical BATS-ish forms: stand-up routines and energetic song covers (“Hey” by the Pixies). The former, delivered with great charisma by both performers, have the characters taking turns to recount the myths of King Minos and Medea. This gives fuller expression to their individual personalities, as well as adding some cultural tension.

Arlo misremembers the stories, and if there’s any theme to his alterations, it’s that they make the male characters more helpless. When Karin tells them correctly, the female characters are restored to their origins as monsters of the misogynistic imagination. The song is a big, convoluted howl of lust, full of vague mentions of ‘whores’. These patriarchal dynamics offer some rewarding parallels to the central relationship, however broad.  

McCracken and Gibsons’ performances are defined by an appropriate sort of assured, professional vigour. The fight choreography must have taken an enormous amount of rehearsal, and it shows in the dancer-like mix of control and abandon that both maintain throughout, however much they sweat. Their characterisation through gesture when not speaking, bleeding seamlessly into their delivery of the monologues, is equally impressive.  

They’re ably supported by Rollandi’s straightforward production design, centred around a small props trolley and a wrestling mat, and by Oliver Devlin’s precisely synchronised mix of 80s songs, original music, and added tape machine hiss. The sparse lighting is deftly handled by Elekis Poblete-Tierney, while the clarity with which everything comes off is testament to Croft’s work as director.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

In viewing abiding truths about male-female relationships through a contemporary lens, Standard Acts juxtaposes actual physical wrestling with retellings of ancient Greek myths. (Some elements may also hold true within non-binary primary relationships but here the man/woman conflict is to the fore.)

Why this title? Well, tracing the primal urge actions of men and women through millennia suggests some things are standard behaviour. Not that there is anything sexual in the highly physical wrestling bouts Karin McCracken and Arlo Gibson engage in, although it could be said some of the contortions they become twisted into could give The Karma Sutra a run for its money.  

It soon becomes clear the purpose of the wrestling is to get your opponent’s back flat to the mat. So Standard Acts could relate to the quest for “standing upright here” both literally and metaphorically, in terms of status, integrity and self-esteem.

Karin and Arlo – who adopt no fictional personae in this work – give no quarter to each other in the six wresting bouts. No prizes for guessing who keeps ‘winning’ yet each bout is approached with fresh and total commitment. Yet rather than become predictable, the tension of audience engagement increases as we hope, and eventually barrack aloud, for a different outcome.

Between each bout either Arlo or Karin take to their mic (they have one each) to regale us with alternative versions of how the Minotaur came to be conceived and born, and what Medea and Jason did that led to such a tragic outcome. You don’t need to know these stories in advance, the way they are told is entertaining and vivid, with exquisite send-ups of emotional over-indulgence to alert us to think about what we feel.

Each telling subliminally informs the way we may view the next wrestling bout. There is plenty of time to contemplate the implications – again both in immediate reality and metaphorically. It’s not stage combat as most of us know it, but with prat-fall exponent extraordinaire Julia Croft at the helm as director, we can trust the actors are safe.

(Skip this paragraph if you’re going and want to come at it untainted by my interpretations.) My thoughts include:  Is the repeated outcome inevitable or is it the rules of the game that prescribe it – if so, decided by whom; when and why? Is this a form of social insanity, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?  What if it was Aikido, for example, where the opponent’s attacking energy is turned against them – would that produce a different outcome?

After the final bout both grab their mics to belt out the Alt-rock band Pixies number, ‘Hey (been trying to meet you)’ which suggests we are chained to attitudes and behaviours that impede the capacity of men and women to meet on common ground.

Then comes a wonderful twist which I won’t reveal here. Suffice to say ‘standing upright’ is not necessarily the way to ‘win’. There are ways of ending up flat on your back which denote spectacular achievement at a level that surpasses brute strength.

Meg Rollandi’s production design includes a chrome trolly containing items that enhance our sense of anticipation as we await the start of the show. Likewise the business of unrolling and securing the wrestling mat adds to the intrigue as a sense of trust and togetherness enfolds us all.

Oliver Devlin’s sound design and Elekis Poblete-Tierney’s lighting design, operated by Haami Hawkins, complete the comprehensively evolved aesthetic that ensures we are drawn into the theatrical conceit in ways that rivet our attention and stimulate our senses, emotions and faculties.  

As a contribution to our abiding quest to resolve the conundrum of primary relationships, Standard Acts stands proudly alongside Barbarian Productions’ SOFT N HARD (2016) and Brynley Stent and Eli Matthewson’s EXES (2020). While very different in their approaches, they complement each other beautifully. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer