The Architects: lost in the maze
Over the period of an hour it fills to capacity of around 300, with a bar and band to assist the ambience. The play begins with the four eponymous Architects introducing themselves in dodgy scandinavian accents, one of whom provides a monologue on what Architecture is and should be: a rejection of the neutral, an art that raises the spirits, and so on. The speech is apparently satirical, swerving between postmodern contradiction: "radicalism is deeply rooted in tradition" and Modernist brio: "Architects are optimists, we have to believe the world can be made better". During this, the same actors, in different roles are watching us all via a video screen. They turn out to be debauched, drunken commissioners/parents, variously engaging with the action, but quickly becoming bored and petulant with their artists/offspring. The space is vast and a combination of sound and lighting effects immerses the audience in a sense of complicity with the main protagonists as they make seemingly random announcements for programmed cruise-liner activities and their after-effects (sorry but the fifth deck is closed after the party whilst someone's stool is cleared from the pool). In between each brief snapshot, the space is plunged into absolute darkness. The Architects' children appear, seek affection from the passengers and return to bed. There is a moment of panic; a fight; blood and everyone has to leave the ship. "play the evacuation song" someone shouts and the band plays it: "Get off this motherfucking ship", they sing, first in the style of thrash metal, then easy listening; the first and only good joke. This is the cue for us to leave the space, but split up from our friends or partners into two groups, who then interact with the continuing performance from two different points of view.
Having seen a number of these shows now, including Shunt's own Amato Saltone in 2004, I guess I've become more immune to these devices, so they no longer hold the same excitement. Its useful to compare The Architects with Amato Saltone: they had much in common, but for my money, the earlier play was far better. In that event, staged in the arches under London Bridge station, the audience also gathers in a bar, but the interaction begins right away. People are asked to collect their keys from a bowl, in the style of a swingers party and this device is used to divide the audience into groups (in these performances, you're always separated from your partner, so you have a connection with the other group). The groups then follow actors through a series of rooms. In each case, something quite serious has evidently just happened; its never clear what, but the audience has to try and pick up the pieces. A phone rings, and the audience-member nearest has to answer it and explain to someone where we are; A mad axeman bursts into the room and for a split-second I instinctively, genuinely feel he's coming for me; one scene we take part in is completely opaque until we move to another room and watch the next group of audience members carrying out the same role-play from behind a one-way screen. The narrative is fragmentary and never resolved, but the fun is in playing with the pieces and making connections between the parts. In the last scene we wonder into the aftermath of a party, occupied only by drunk, pregnant women; its surreal, but somehow authentic.
The Architects never achieves this level of engagement. The audience is too big; we're sitting down for too long and the tricks are too clumsy (men have to leave through one door, women another). A screen tells us what to shout so the women hear us and we hear them, both being manipulated, but we know they're just responding to another screen. Most importantly, the nonsense is happening in the now, rather than the recent past; there's nothing to figure out. Its loaded with crude metaphors: the cynical patrons of the arts, the programmed situationism of the cruise-liner entertainers; a ship of fools; the maze and the minotaur who scares us off the boat. It feels disappointing: tired and cynical.
Shunt and these other pop-up performance artists achieve some remarkable sets and special effects. Somehow they manage to avoid the mundane requirements of fire safety paraphernalia so the audience can genuinely feel lost in the darkness. They make the best use of the size and weirdly empty spaces they inhabit and by rejecting complete narratives, they create a reason for the audience to engage theatrically. But, at least in the case of Shunt, they don't seem to have developed the idea with the times. Architects and artists can't feel cynical about their patrons when they no longer have any. Instead, their situationist instincts can be put to productive use in the most meagre of ways, as demonstrated by Architects collective Assemble. Having graduating from Architecture school without jobs, they invent their own projects, find their own money and build things themselves. Their Architecture is theatrical and situationist, but ultimately optimistic, even whilst retaining postmodernism's unavoidable irony. The biggest problem with The Architects was simply that it wasn't funny. Five or ten years ago, it probably would have been both funny and true, but the world has moved on and now it seems as though the joke is on them.
Folly for a flyover: Assemble's temporary performance space in 2012
