Wild Longings
For all the big ticket performances of the Norwich and Norfolk Festival, it can be intimate, site-specific shows that bring out the regional personality of an event, offering something unique and special to what might otherwise be a string of generic shows. The Plantation Garden, that borders Earlham Road, is one of those places you never quite get round to visiting. I’ve been meaning to for the last twenty years, so the chance to enjoy some immersive theatre in what looks like one of the festivals more imaginative offerings seemed like the perfect excuse to tick that box. Immaculately tended, this Victorian folly is built within the remains of an ancient quarry, and could have provided the backdrop for a quirky, idiosyncratic work that was imaginatively staged and charmingly creative. What a pity, then, that the opportunity was largely squandered.
The afternoon started promisingly enough, with the handing out of headphones through which snippets of Gardeners’ Question Time morphed into an eerie nursery rhyme. What audio mischief did this portent, I wondered. Sadly, the devices primary role was no more than a mechanism amplifying Helen Parris’s voice – the first of many small disappointments - as she took us on a faux tour of the gardens while channelling Lucinda Lambton along the way. We got some harmless comedy business, a few QI style factoids about pollination and the like, and some audience participation. It was thin gruel, but I think I would have enjoyed the performance more if I have known it was all I was getting. Judging by the distracted looks on my fellow audience members faces, I wasn’t alone in fidgeting distractedly, while waiting for something altogether more interesting to happen.
Instead we were invited to go find ourselves a bench and soak up our environment. Thankfully the clouds had parted - there are certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon than sitting in the spring sunshine, surrounding by magnificent gardens, but this felt like filler and a cheat. Eventually encouraged to regroup, Paris had been replaced by Leslie Hill, who spoke earnestly about her relocation to this country before giving a potted history of the horrors of dust bowl prairie farming during the 1930’s in America. Presumably, this was intended to draw parallels with the current dual crisis of climate change and pollution, but it was a dislocating example to draw upon while wandering around a Norwich garden, not least when a further gear change brought us closer to home, as the distribution of acorns led to an invitation to go home and plant.
Our earphones were collected having barely exploited them, after which we were sat in front of a garden gazebo for the closing scene of the afternoon. In many ways the most inventive passage –Claudia Barton sang to us while we ate foraged food – it was nonetheless similarly diffuse and confusing. Barton is an accomplished musician and singer, so I’m guessing the caterwauling inflicted was supposed to be satirical, or at least amusing, but I remain unsure – perhaps she just had an off day. I had troubles of my own, having taken an ambitious bite out of my Japanese Knot Weed starter, it had caught in the back of my throat. Self-consciously gagging and dribbling down my front while a Chanteuse ate nettles, while playing the zither, has all the makings of comedy gold, but I was too close to things to find it very funny. On the contrary, my initial boredom had by now shifted into something close to anger that people had paid proper money to see this shambolic series of disconnected vignettes.
The show concluded on a song, which we were invited to join in. A cardboard sign was held aloft by a young girl that I imagine was the child of one of the performers. We had previously heard her charmingly, persuasively and earnestly outlining her concern at the dire state of our planet, she was now loudly and proudly singing words of protest by way of confirmation. Immediately she melted my grumpy heart, my anger dissipated and I all but forgave Curious Theatre the hour of my life I would never get back. When their heart was so obviously in the right place, it is hard to stay too cross with them, but I just wish this company had tried harder to forge something more theatrically cohesive out of the fragmentary glimpses of imagination I witnessed. That said, I will plant my acorn and look after it while it grows. I suppose if everyone else that came to see the show does the same with their acorns, the company will have created a tiny, disparate oak forest. If so, perhaps they did their job after all.
