Devisers: Alasdair Coulter, Sophie Lynch and Yuri Furtado
Writers: Yuri Furtado and Qi Wang
Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto’s Morte e Vida Severina, an epic play in verse form, sees Sevarino leave his famine-stricken village on a long quest to his country’s capital. More an allegory of faith than a travelogue, Severino’s journey has similarities with that of Christian in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, written some 300 years earlier.
Double Jinx Theatre’s physical theatre-infused retelling takes Melo Neto’s story and reframes it into a mythical land called Tephra, inhabited by peoples who worship a variety of animalistic gods.
Yuri Furtado’s Severino is an engaging protagonist, half-narrating the story as he leaves the ash-covered fields of his village to find a new life. The characters he leaves behind, and those he meets along the way, are all played by Alasdair Coulter and Sophie Lynch, with some quick character changes adding the mix of comedy and high melodrama.
If some of the wider elements of world-building in the creation of Tephra and its various environs struggle to feel fully realised in the limited staging available, the characterisations help to contribute to the sense of an epic journey from arid volcanic biome, to marshland and then a Venetian-style city full of canals and debauchery.
The piece is elevated further with some puppetry work to depict the land’s god, especially with an intricately vivid raven, operated by Coulter. As Severino’s journey takes him to the land of the dead and back multiple times, the trio of performers uses dance, mime and comedy to emphasise the social strata of the communities of Tephra, from peasants who eke out a life despite having next to nothing to the city’s gentry who revel with abandon, drinking the wine cellars dry.
Coulter and Lynch bring a lot of fun to their myriad characters, although the repetition of accents and stature sometimes makes the various personas lose their distinctiveness. Around them, Furtado leads with a sense of dance that elevates the whole piece.
As with Melo Neto’s original work, Severino’s journey ends with self-contemplation about the worth of his life, contemplating suicide until the birth of a baby boy offers an alternative viewpoint. In the original piece, this is taken to be a Christian allegory, reinforcing the similarities with Bunyan’s tale.
The world of myth imagined by Double Jinx has more in common with those conjured up for Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing games, which lessens the theistic elements of the allegory. But in doing so, it also broadens the appeal. Tephra may be a desolate land, but it is inhabited by people one wishes to see more of.
Continues until 18 August 2024.
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Mythical allegory
