Salvador Kent
On one of the many pieces of card, paper, fabric onto which Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed write for us to read aloud, they reflect on their beginnings as a poetry group. Poetry, that is to say, deliberate language, is at the heart of their life-affirming hour Handle With Care, a beautiful proof of concept of theatre’s most fundamental truths.
Peter Brook ended up regretting his adage that a man can walk across an empty space and thus create an act of theatre, but here it is utterly true. It begins with calling cards: ‘the performance starts when everybody has had time to read this and one of you opens the box’. Sure enough, one of us audience members opens the box, and from there, that’s it. No actors, no technicians — but there is music, there is movement. Surprisingly, perhaps most mind-boggling, there is drama — suspense, release, empathy. We find out some people’s earliest memories; we witness an audience member tear up the first scene, we collaborate and sometimes bicker.
It’s like poetry, because language comes above all. Ontroerend Goed have decided the most important language here is the language of theatre. There are the words, some of them poignant. We organise them as we see fit. During my performance, a placard reading “The End of the Universe” was placed prior to “Maybe we will see each other again”. One of us perked up – ‘that’s not chronological’. No, but it is poetic. And so we had our own little drama in that moment. And the words themselves were their little dramas, and the movements (do I stand there, can I stand there?) their dramas and the whole thing was a poem in a moment.
Ontroerend Goed are not afraid to withhold, to leave some things unspoken. Only a select few of us got a letter. Only a few of us spoke out loud. Many of us opted to do tasks, but this is a very non-confrontational show, fascinating when you consider it is purely down to us. It is a work that could only be made by real experts of the form, people who have enough faith in humanity to trust their audiences. In some ways this piece seems to be revolving around their last Fringe show, Thanks for Being Here (which Lamesha Ruddock reviewed beautifully here), but Handle With Care places even more faith in the audience, even more faith in the act of theatre.
This is a theatre that organises all of our languages – body, movement, speech, gesture. Ontroerend Goed have taken the everyday and made us think about it consciously for a moment, in all of its dimensions. Terry Eagleton once said there is a difference between a stranger coming up to you on a tube and whispering ‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness’, and the same stranger saying ‘Mind the Gap’. Both are linguistic; one is literary. Ontroerend Goed understand the potential for theatre is everywhere in the world. It is possible in the cafe where I write this review. So, they explore this in a gathering of people, they make us performers, they show us theatre’s DNA.
What a feat to make one of the most affirming statements on this medium, completely devoid of the company. We’re the actors. Handle With Care is a gift. Go accept it.
Recommended Drink: Take your favourite drink into this one… you’ll see why.
Performances of Handle With Care are currently sold out, but it’s on until 30th August at Zoo Southside, Studio (Main House) at 13.30 (75 minutes, although we took approximately 50 minutes). Information available through the EdFringe Online Box Office. There were plenty of seats left at the performance I attended, so it may be worth it to show up just before the performance. Run, don’t walk to this one!
Hannah Hamilton
Freddie Haberfellner
Bethany Ramsay
