NEAR GONE REVIEW On 16th January 2014, I saw Near Gone by Two Destination Language in the Warwick Arts Centre. Near Gone is described by performers Katherina Radeva and Alister Lownie as “a gripping story of survival, told with passionate dancing, pounding gypsy music and tremendous honesty.” The result however, is more of a lack-lustered hour of predictable imagery and fairly tedious storytelling. Sitting somewhere between theatre and live art, the premise of the show was very promising: Radeva told her story in Bulgarian whilst Lownie had the undesirable job of translating every sentence into English. There were admittedly comic moments where Lownie would fail to find the correct translation, much to the irritation of his fellow performer; though the slow pace of the storytelling and constant repetition and retelling became grating quite quickly. Radeva’s story of her 4 year-old sister being found by her parents hanging on the iron gate leading into their garden was certainly a heartbreaking one, especially when it appears to be autobiographical, and there was a nice commentary made by the piece in highlighting our ignorance to what Bulgaria is really like. We are reliant on Lownie’s translation and take the idyllic description of the green fields aided by (400 fresh flowers on stage) as the truth, told only about the towering apartment blocks on each side of the house once Radeva’s body - embodying her sister - lay in a heap on the floor. Expectations for ‘passionate dancing’ proved to be let down, as whilst the gypsy music was very catchy, Radeva danced more like a drunken aunt at Christmas, spinning bunches of roses as their heads only nearly missed our faces on the front row in the sparsely filled Studio. She would follow this with a bow, before retaking her position alongside Lownie: an action we probably saw too many times. The structure of the piece simply left me wondering how the performers go on tolerating the basic choreography and ‘pounding gypsy music’ night after night, and whatever effect the repetition of the dance sequence had were lost on me. I was interested the first time to see how the dancing would develop in line with the story, but the sad fact for me was, it didn’t. It appeared to plateau in its evocativeness, reaching a level of passion in its first sequence which failed to grow or arouse any subsequent feelings in me. The story behind Near Gone had the potential to be expressive and captivating, however the style in which it was presented and the form that the piece took seemed to facilitate an indulgence for the performers, leaving the audience detached and frankly unstimulated. The show ultimately eschews theatricality to a large extent, and I can’t help but feel that this decision made it too skeletal and static in the empty black box space for any emotional engagement. Near Gone is touring the UK until 30th May. twodestinationlanguage/ Sam Wightman, Second Year
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:42:50 +0000
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