Ockham’s Razor is not a company that shies away from a challenge. As if telling Thomas Hardy’s complex tale of a wronged woman—Tess of the D’Urbervilles—using physical rather than verbal storytelling was not enough, they concentrate on circus skills instead of the more obvious dance. Purists might regard circus as a trivial artform, associated with stunts rather than storytelling, and so beneath the dignity of such a classic text.
An element of compromise is apparent at the start—Macadie Amoroso performs in a speaking role as the inner voice of Tess Durbeyfield and also serves as narrator. It is a subtle performance, moving from neutral tones as narrator to a distinct rural accent to articulate Tess’s feelings, but the approach feels a bit of a cheat and unnecessary on occasions when a skilled cast can tell the story purely through movement.
Directors Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney (who also adapted the original novel) take a harsh view of life. The challenges and hazards faced by the characters are represented by the cast teetering along planks held aloft by colleagues. The rural life is far from peaceful, recreation is rowdy and close to roughhousing with colleagues chucked around the stage and feet being used to settle arguments.
Props are rarely used and tend to make a comic point. Rather than a herd of cows, a collection of exaggerated balloons are used to suggest their udders. The score by Holly Khan is remarkably varied. There are obvious folk music undertones, including an ominous bagpipe-like drone, but also flashes of bluegrass and country and western.
Nathan Johnston’s choreography is inspired by physical work—the arms of the dancers move as if sweeping or reaping and gathering crops. There is an exuberance in the scenes of the ensemble at work which is notably absent from the more reflective routines concentrating upon the individual characters.
This is circus without a net and on occasions the stunts do not always work and must be repeated. Lila Naruse, who is the physical performer for Tess, plummets to the stage when the wobbly structure upon which she precariously balances falls apart. It is admirable that Naruse is willing to re-mount the structure and complete the scene; I’d have run a mile.
The show is not without humour, most coming from Lauren Jamieson, Victoria Skillen and Leah Wallings as the milkmaids whose efforts to ogle Nat Whittingham’s Angel Clare result in them balancing from a rickety structure and acrobatically hanging upside down, twisting into weird and wonderful positions. Whittingham is a trouper; in the scene where his affection for Tess becomes indisputable, he carries each of the maids, and finally all of them at the same time, across a flooded path, possibly bringing a new meaning to having a threesome.
Jamieson, Skillen and Wallings also contribute to the most disturbing scene—Tess’s tormented mind being represented by them and Naruse stalking the stage bent backwards into ‘C’ shapes like possessed or tortured spirits.
Joshua Frazer’s entrance as Alec D’Urberville is the perfect demonstration of the effectiveness of the circus technique. Frazer enters on a Cyr wheel capturing D’Urberville’s arrogance and disdain for other people who are endangered by his grandstanding routine. The Cyr wheel also serves as a trap for Naruse’s Tess, who becomes entangled in the spinning object.
Tess’s fate is shown onstage, but not as an execution, more as the character achieving, finally, a sort of freedom. Lila Naruse performs an ‘aerial silks’ routine (in which ironically the silk material is replaced by a rough hangman’s rope) twisting and turning above the stage ecstatically celebrating Tess’s release from suffering.
Despite some compromise, Tess remains a daring and compelling artistic achievement—you dare not look away from the stage for fear of missing some new development.