search
date/time
Yorkshire Times
A Voice of the Free Press
frontpagebusinessartscarslifestylefamilytravelsportsscitechnaturefictionCartoons
Phil Hopkins
Group Travel Editor & Theatre Correspondent
@philhopkinsuk
5:48 PM 18th May 2016
arts

Forster On Forster - Another Dystopian Nightmare!

 
EM Forster
EM Forster
Maybe the uncertainty of our world is making producers a little jumpy these days, with tendencies towards all things Dystopian?

First Northern Ballet gave us its take on Orwell's 1984, last year Aldous Huxley's Brave New World made its entry at the Alhambra, and now it is the turn of EM Forster's novella, The Machine Stops, cleverly adapted for the York Theatre Royal stage by Neil Duffield.

I am not quite sure whether I am suffering from a personality flaw or a sense of fatalism, but I went out of my way to see all three, and this latest offering from Pilot Theatre had me intrigued all the way. As much as the work itself I remain fascinated by those writers who prophesised the future when much of technology was still an idea.

Huxley foresaw test tube babies, Orwell gave us a nice take on mind control and Forster, as far back as 1909, predicted our total dependency and near worship of machines. Even Beneath the Planet of the Apes got in on the act in 1970: "Glory be to the Bomb, and to the Holy Fallout. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen!"

Interestingly two out of three of the authors were pacifists, writing about despotic, controlling environments.

Forster's story, directed for the stage by his namesake, Juliet Forster, was only 12,000 or so words long, and yet it has lasting memories for many people, least of all its director who confesses to being inspired by the millennium bug and world paranoia that all machines would reset in year 2000.

In the denouement of Keanu Reeves' movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, we momentarily witness a world where electricity has gone and man must return to a less than mechanical life, whilst Schwarzenegger gave us the nightmare of a world run by machines in The Terminator.

Writers and creatives have been fascinated by annihilationism, machines and dystopian worlds since time began and Juliet Forster is no different. But the real power of her York production is that it allows you to momentarily witness the distortion of a world that has become superficially arrogant, concluding that only second hand ideas are worthy of merit, simply because they have lost the guts to visit an 'outside' world for new, fresh input, imprisoned underground by both their fears and the all-seeing, all doing machine.

Vashti and her son Kuno are part of the 'under' world and new Earth where all humans live below the ground. They are connected by video conferencing machines and email and their leg muscles have wasted away as the machine gives them everything and does all; until it stops!

Some weeks ago my sat nav was stolen from my car and for a moment I went into momentary meltdown, how would I get to XYZ? What happened to your bloody A to Z I thought? Technology de skills and introduces fear, as the Everest climber discovered; satellite navigation devices falter in sub-zero temperatures.

I really enjoyed The Machine Stops. It is grey, dark, foreboding and draws you in, like a voyeur witnessing something slightly illicit; nice to watch but not really much fun to be part of.

Caroline Gruber was suitably arrogant as the lecture-delivering Vashti, so sure of herself until the thing that sustains her, the machine, stops, leaving her vulnerable and, for the first time in years, re-connected to her son Kuno, who at the eleventh hour arrives at her underground 'cell' as their world collapses, and physically re-connects them. They hug; humanity is restored.

I enjoyed the spirited performance of Karl Queensborough's Kuno, determined to re-engage with both his muscles and a humanity long since passed, so that he can forcibly pull himself to the surface of the planet without need of a respirator or a pass from the authorities.

Set designer Rhys Jarmon clearly had to grapple with this fictionalised piece and, at first, I was not sure about the two actors climbing around the metal frame erected on stage but, as a representation of the machine, they worked brilliantly if, at times, the music was marginally too high, initially obscuring their plot establishing narrative. Turn it down a tad!

In truth, I really enjoyed The Machine Stops because it makes you think. It is not light-hearted by any stretch of the imagination, but a serious piece of theatre and a worthy production for York Theatre Royal to put its name to.

Until June 4th 2016
York Theatre Royal