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Toronto Star Review: Breath[e] More Than Hot Air
by Susan Walker Unlike the 30-second Samuel Beckett play Breath that inspired it, Steve Lucas' 25-minute Breath[e] is not a piece of dramatic reductionism. Rather, in the way that Beckett's works came more and more to resemble the interior workings of a highly literate intelligence, Breath[e] takes the audience on a journey of a mindscape. The show accommodates only 18 viewers in a black box positioned to form a kind of cockpit, or maybe the interior of a box camera, facing a rectangular opening. In utter darkness, the sound of a heartbeat and then deep breathing usher in backlit images of flesh and blood flashed on the walls and ceiling. We could be inside a cranium or a ribcage. The walls could be a diaphragm. A black screen slowly rises to reveal the ever-receding space beyond it. Subtly, the space before the viewers changes from an interior to an exterior, with a sun or a moon, perhaps, illuminating a seascape, or possibly a desert. Later on it will shimmer, suggesting a an artificial backdrop. Hillar Liitoja and Steve Gordon Marsh have fashioned a soundscape of heavy industrial noises, plumbing sounds, the dragging of huge metal objects immediately above our heads or on the walls beside us. Breath[e] takes theatre down to its bare bones in the sense that meaning resides entirely in the imaginations of the viewers. A sensory extravaganza, a mind-stretching voyage, Breath[e] is more than a showcase for the stage designer. For every person that ventures down this rabbit hole, the experience will shape a different story. |