It’s hard to provide a description that does justice to Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage, which played at the German Club as part of this year’s Adelaide Festival. US company BBB Theatre have taken the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem and used it to create something fresh, vibrant and contemporary; a meta-theatrical drama that’s both entertaining and interesting.
The play opens on what appears to a group of university students giving a presentation to their tutorial group. As such, they quickly go through a number of the key characters, labeling them clearly as certain archetypal figures. They discuss what the societal basis might be for terms like ‘monster’. This is all written with the sort of self-deprecating fun that can only be achieved through genuine familiarity and I suspect Jason Craig must have sat through a lot of pompous, post-modern lectures in his time.
This discussion, which quickly turns into a sort of three-handed spoken poem, provides an excellent framework for the evening. It allows the story to be told not in its long, rambling, original form but through a series of key scenes which examine the stripped-back meanings of characters and events, and why those meanings still have resonance today.
Music is quickly added as a stage band is revealed behind the main speakers. With lots of trombone and reeds, this ensemble provides a sumptuously bawdy and guttural backing to the action. The main characters start to have signature tunes, entrance music and also to sing their own aria-like numbers, explaining who they are and what they’re feeling. All of this is done with unbelievable energy and wit, so that much of the evening’s humour is derived from the musical portions of the show. The musicians are all very good and the singing is excellent.
Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage is not a big budget extravaganza but it provides far more insight into this old story than other recent retellings one might name. The characters, at first just described by the opening speakers, soon start to take over proceedings. They start to talk back to the student presenters, answering what were rhetorical questions and showing unselfconscious pride at their un-reconstructed, shallow natures. Performers begin to move about the room, walking amongst the audience, and soon a lot of the action is happening off-stage. Great battles occur on tabletops, and monsters prowl the dark room as they are being discussed and deconstructed at the podium. The performers bring enough gravitas to their roles to carry this off, so that what could have looked like cheap ploys, instead provide extra movement and meaning to the story.
The well-written dialogue allows the audience, through the student presenters, to both critique and connect with the story and characters. Simplistic characters are examined and questioned, even confronted directly about their views as the presenters interact with them. But at the same time, the play also explores how easy it still is to identify with these characters. The best example is a moment when the most stridently feminist of the students suddenly drops into the character of the monster’s mother and is able to confront Beowulf about his unthinking slaying of her child.
Perhaps the hardest thing to describe is why all of these parts – a student union play, set in a beer hall, with minimal story, maximum analysis and a raucous band – add up to such a satisfying whole. Maybe it is the sense of having been challenged to think about a story that is so often told lazily. Maybe it is the excitement of not simply being allowed to be a lazy audience member but instead needing to concentrate and construct an understanding from the clues provided.
Whatever it is, Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage is well performed and well written, and will still have you thinking about it weeks later.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage
Writer: Jason Craig
Composer: Dave McAlloy
Directors: Rod Hipskind and Mallory Catlett
Music Director: Rick Burkhardt
Performed by: Jen Baker, Rick Burkhardt, Lisa Clair, Jason Craig, Ezra Gale, Rod Hipskind, Jessica Jelliffe, Mario Maggio, Molly McAdoo, Brian McCorkle, Andy Strain, Shaye Troha and Pete Wise
The German Club, Adelaide
11 – 16 March
Adelaide Festival 2013
www.adelaidefestival.com.au
1 – 17 March
