Has today's theatre no story to tell?

Theatre is on the move in New York City. I mean that literally. It’s less and less confined to the precincts of anything we would recognise as a space for performance, and more and more about creating ambiences and total experiences. Let me share three experiences.

Fuerza Bruta is the second show of a Brazilian company, whose first offering a few years ago, De La Garda, blew away my mind. It is set in a huge hall, up and down several staircases and everything in it moves, the walls disappear, the ceiling descends and becomes a swimming pool, stairs and slopes appear, and the standing audience is moved gently but firmly by ushers, to duck, sidestep, retreat or go under the transparent floor of the pool to see swishing dancing bodies.

Huge fans blow scraps of paper and one’s hair all over. But unlike its predecessor, which threw one’s entire sense of mooring and lead to sensory confusion, this show remains tired and looking for gags. Three or four tired ideas get repeated too many times for too long and the music lacks punch.

Then there is Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812. These are characters taken from a small section of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, minor characters in the book developed into their own stories. We make our way into the meat-packing district ( I with trepidation, as a vegetarian) and find a huge tent, a la Gandhi Brothers in the university grounds. Inside one is transported into a raucous candle and chandelier filled restraint of Tolstoy’s times, richly adorned and sparkling with the audience sitting eating at every table.

We are served vodka and borsch by  waiter actors, and for a while we dine in style, sharing a ringside table with other audience members. And suddenly the plot unfolds amidst us, with actors and singers here there and everywhere, within touching distance, sometimes nearly on top of us. The story is complex, of Natasha’s love having gone to war and her infatuation with a no good man. And the spectacle is worthy of the effort. We sit, twisting in our seats, enthralled visually, but missing the storyline in the staging.

And there is the McKittrick Hotel with Sleep No More. The hotel was built to be the grandest one in the city over seventy years ago, but America went into WW II the day it was to open. It got sealed and remained so for all these years, till one of the heirs decided that it must not continue standing forlorn. The UK company, Punch Drunk, was hired to create a performance based in the hotel, using the hotel as the set.

Audiences arrive and pull a card that will signify when they enter the ‘zone’. The setting is dark and mysterious as we wait in the red velvet covered bar, amidst tinkling glasses. As we are lead to the door, we are handed a mask, not to be removed and are warned that we may face psychological terror, and must not utter a word. If we get lost, separated from companions so much the better for this is to be experienced by oneself. The insides are darker still and one can barely make things out. There are five floors of rooms, done up in period style.

The only unmasked people are the actor dancers and the story that unfolds is loosely based on Macbeth. One is pushed along with the crowd as actors suddenly appear in their drawing rooms, or amidst ruins or near ancient phone boxes or dinner tables weighed down with food and drink. No dialogue, just music. The performance is brilliantly constructed and the spaces detailed and mysterious. But here again, after the spectacular has worn off, where is the story?

Is it now all about the experience and less about the why of the story?

The writer is a noted danseuse and social activist