{"id":1309,"date":"2016-06-13T16:01:30","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T15:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1309"},"modified":"2016-06-13T17:22:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T16:22:28","slug":"propwatch-the-sock-in-phaedras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2016\/06\/propwatch-the-sock-in-phaedras.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the sock in Phaedra(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PHEDRES-7195-1024x683\"<\/a><\/p>\n

British audiences are no longer scared of European theatre. It has taken us years \u2013 decades \u2013 to feel relaxed about non-representational stagings, actors stripped of plummy tones, the fourth wall not only breached but blown to smithereens. Ivo van Hove and Thomas Ostermeier are our adorable foreign uncles who visit every couple of years with cool gifts. Katie Mitchell, Simon Stephens and Lyndsey Turner are boho relatives with charming foreign ways. And we\u2019re pretty much down with that.<\/p>\n

And the comes Phaedra(s)<\/a><\/em>, visiting LIFT (the London International Festival of Theatre) from l\u2019Od\u00e9on in Paris, and it is so massively European, so uncompromisingly, horse-frighteningly French, that the waters of the English Channel might rise in alarm to repel the invaders.<\/p>\n

Most versions of the Phaedra myth \u2013 in which Theseus\u2019 wife falls catastrophically in lust with his son Hippolytus \u2013 are beyond British comfort zones. Classical texts by Euripides or Seneca are testing; more so the lapidary torment of Racine, challenging instinctively sardonic actors like Glenda Jackson or Helen Mirren to discard irony as they enter the verse tragedy.<\/p>\n

Isabelle Huppert stars in Phaedra(s)<\/em> which, as the title suggests, takes several versions of the story \u2013 by Wajdi Mouawad, Sarah Kane (out of Seneca), JM Coetzee and, finally, Racine. The production by Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski<\/a> is mighty meta \u2013 it opens with Huppert\u2019s raucous Aphrodite discoursing on the origins of democracy in a Cicciolina wig, and closes with her arch academic whimsically describing the erotic power imbalance between gods and mortals. It all makes for an unassimilable 220 minutes, from the stunt philosophy texts and hooker deluxe costumes (Warlikowski doesn\u2019t believe in woman who don\u2019t wear heels) to the disconcerting take on gender: an exotic dancer in big shoes and small pants performs endless routines \u2013 figuring Phaedra as the immigrant woman of uncomfortable sexuality, perhaps, but in a crude fashion.<\/p>\n

‘Hate me now?’<\/strong><\/p>\n

But what seals the Anglo-Euro divide in this production is Hippolytus\u2019 sock. In Sarah Kane\u2019s 1996 play Phaedra\u2019s Love<\/em><\/a>, the centrepiece of this production, the prince (Andrzej Chyra) does not cling to his chastity, but rather to his shame. He\u2019s a mucky pup, stuffing his face with burgers, his eyes with movie violence, his dick into the nearest hole or hand. Or, frequently, sock. Now, a British audience will always snigger at an adolescent wanking into a sock: you could probably show a montage of Men Behaving Badly<\/em>, The Inbetweeners<\/em> and Fresh Meat<\/em> at an immigration hearing and offer citizenship to anyone making the appropriate \u2018fnarr\u2019 noises.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t claim Phaedra\u2019s Love<\/em>\u00a0for farce, though Kane did describe it as \u2018my comedy.\u2019 Hippolytus is the ultimate disillusioned youth skulking in his bedroom, and his refusal to reciprocate the narratives of desire, faith or power that he is offered is blackly funny. This snotty, selfish boy brings down a dynasty without even trying \u2013 \u2018Hate me now?\u2019, he asks repeatedly. And, yes, the fetid wankpit is a grossly comic setting.<\/p>\n

Hosiery is a minor player in classic British drama. Hamlet\u2019s downcast stockings are the first signs of his supposedly wavering wits; Malvolio\u2019s yellow stockings an index of unhinged aspiration. The male lower leg is, on stage, an undignified appendage, and if you notice what it\u2019s wearing, then it\u2019s probably letting someone down.<\/p>\n

Not so here. There\u2019s wit in Huppert\u2019s dry readings of Kane\u2019s increasingly baroque stage directions (\u2018a vulture descends and starts to eat his body\u2019), but Warlikowski smooths over the twitchy self-disgust and depression. Kane\u2019s gross prince is tucked into a nice little suit, and the play is staged in a chic cube (photo above by Pascal Victor), the shower scene from Psycho<\/em> playing on a loop, and a water-torture reverberation filling the air with portent.<\/p>\n

The socks into which this Hippolytus snots and spunks aren\u2019t the terrible novelty items or greyed-out M&S standards of the British bedroom; from a distance, they looked soft, slender numbers, sashaying onto the stage straight from the Place Vend\u00f4me. It\u2019s perhaps surprising that a smutty gag could conduct us to the heart of a play about depression, male rage and pointlessness. But there you are: a sticky sock is key. Huppert is a blazing presence, but you can\u2019t help anticipating the next in that series of smug books: French women don\u2019t get smut.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British audiences are no longer scared of European theatre. It has taken us years \u2013 decades \u2013 to feel relaxed about non-representational stagings, actors stripped of plummy tones, the fourth wall not only breached but blown to smithereens. Ivo van Hove and Thomas Ostermeier are our adorable foreign uncles who visit every couple of years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[124,347,322,321,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-barbican","9":"tag-lift","10":"tag-props","11":"tag-propwatch","12":"tag-theatre","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}