Caligari
Contorted bodies scattered across a stage dominated by a distorted monolithic cabinet, a black wooden construction askew with the black vaulted dungeon in which it sits, sinister and dank, as the music begins the bodies rise and move awkwardly and tell the tale of the twisted world of the Great Caligari, a fortune teller who came to the German market town of Holstenwall.
Friends Francis and Alan suitors for the hand of Jane, together they enjoyed the entertainments until they came to Caligari and his somnambulant assistant Cesare who rouses from his slumber to ask questions put to him of the future; Alan asking how long he will live the response disturbs him, and he creeps home through the shadows and fog, a curse upon him that he will not see the dawn.
Based on Robert Wiene’s 1920 silent horror film Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari, ChewBoy Production’s Caligari has shifted the frame to resurrect it to ghastly afterlife as a five piece of performers and musicians, tortured puppets forced to perform their nightmares, their fading memories the only way they have of retaining their identities, reaching out to an audience for understanding and sympathy as they preserve themselves by re-enacting their deaths.
The fourth wall broken as the ghosts address the audience, the awkward transitions should become smoother as the run progresses with the performers otherwise fully in their roles, a tragedy where the wheeze of an accordion is the wind in the night, the final flute lament the understanding that Cesare was as much a victim as others and the sad realisation that it is always the killer whose name is remembered and that terrible things cannot be stopped by burying the truth but only by speaking it.
Caligari runs at Underbelly Cowgate until Sunday 28th August
