Writer: Aurelie Freoua
Director: Victor Sobchak
Poetry, art, music and dance come together on stage at the Etcetera Theatre in Victor Sobchak’s free-ranging adaptation of Aurelie Freoua’s poetry and the artist creates a painting as the show unfolds. A piece that purposefully jettisons traditional dramatic structure, narrative form and purpose, The Infinity Quest is a representative space where scenes and reflections come to life, masks conceal “multiple personalities and lives,” and the audience is free to imagine the rest.
This 40-minute play is centred around the creation of a single abstract painting which is constructed piecemeal between and through other scenes and, like John Logan’s Red which looked at Mark Rothko, ponders the creative process and the transcendental role of the artist in giving physical form to philosophical ideas, emotions and expression. The stage is decorated with vibrant pieces of abstract art – presumably all Freoua’s – that provide a colourful backdrop to the poetry and scenes performed by the four-strong cast.
And while there is no plot, there are snatches of ideas, often about love and relationships as couples form, obsess over one another and wallow in the romanticism of their time together. As the actors speak lines from Freoua’s poems, a darker meaning emerges, of love ended or lost while the tone changes later in the show, becoming more violent when the actors grab at each other and speak with a different level of intensity.
Yet the audience arguably takes far less from this seemingly improvised piece than the actors who are given free rein to perform songs, dance, paint and interact. Some structure is provided by poems recited in both French and English, but Infinity Quest becomes an increasingly alienating experience. The synopsis may encourage us to ‘Be unique, be yourself, be free!’ but that proves impossible in a traditional theatre set-up. The performance may be improvised but the barrier between creatives and the audience is maintained – perhaps some interaction, an encouragement to defy theatrical convention and participate in this confluence of forms might give the show greater purpose.
There is a 1960s aesthetic and soul to Sobchak’s approach that seeks liberation from inherited ideas of what a performance should be, but it doesn’t go quite far enough. If actors Athena Phos, Jackson Wright, Bogdan Yumanov and Freoua want to throw off the tradition and trade philosophical snippets in lieu of conversation, then the audience also needs to be freed from its role as passive observer of a multi-creative experience.
Runs until 10 September 2023
