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The
Tiger's Bride Group: Flying Machine |
| James Gledhill | |
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Exploring the dark and sinister hinterland on the borders of fantasy and reality, The Tiger's Bride is an entrancing journey into a land of childhood fairytales and brooding sexuality. Set in a Russia of dark mythology, a young girl on the verge of adulthood traveling with her father arrives in a provincial town populated by sharp-beaked inhuman creatures. Forced into a high-stakes card game with a strange masked beast, the father is carried away by dreams of riches and ends up consigning his daughter to servitude under this mysterious creature. This is a play of vivid symbolism, liminal states and elided contrasts. The civilization of St. Petersburg, aligned with humanity, consciousness and control is set in opposition to a primitive dream-world freed from human constraints and driven by unbridled desires. Images conjured by fairytales and superstitions unlock a world of untamed passion and sexual longing. Delighting in such paradoxes as the sexuality of childhood, the piece has at its heart a fascinating dialectic of desire that ponders questions of vulnerability and strength, attraction and escape, which emerge through the psychology of sexual relationships. These themes are approached through powerful images of masking and unmasking, with ideas of revelation, probing and stripping bare explored for all their complex and interweaving physical and psychological connotations. The range of apparent dichotomies on display are dissolved through a range of metamorphoses and reversals, revolving around the central notion of how the strength of sexual desire is itself a weakness. The
production does full justice to all these themes with the compelling use of puppets
and masks and atmospheric use of music packing a real punch and creating an electrifying
atmosphere. The uniformly excellent cast brings to their performance a muscular
intensity, conjuring an air of menace and crackling sensuality. An array of prowling
cloaked figures frame the central relationship which culminates in a writhing
carnal embrace in which the black-streaked girl is seduced into the world of the
beast, the lamb contending with the lion. 10
August to 24 August.
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