REVIEW: Through a Glass Darkly
For years after the war, my grandfather kept in his workshop, windows whose every pane of glass was criss-crossed by tape to prevent flying shards in the event of a German bomb. It seemed rather anachronistic in the 1960s but in Kyiv today it’s apparently quite normal. Indeed, it forms the basis of one of the accompanying art works by Dasha Podoltseva, a Ukrainian, whose early years were spent in a typical monolithic housing estate – a Panelka. And it is memories of this childhood that are at the heart of the latest production from Explore the Arch – the innovative and experimental theatre company based in a private house in St Leonards.
Dasha Podoltseva was lucky enough to move away from her Panelka and today looks back on it with a mixture of nostalgia and glass-dark adult realism. Her audio and video statements, recorded remotely from Kyiv, form the backbone of this event which is visualised in an extraordinarily imaginative way by director Gail Borrow and her team. Their background in puppetry is immediately apparent with a cats-cradle of strings winding throughout the performance-space, lowering and raising giant illustrations of Panelka buildings; suspending torches in mid-air to spotlight details; attached to keys – both door and radiator; and being plucked to simulate musical instruments. The sheer inventiveness takes the breath away.
Dasha Podoltseva
CREDIT: Rod Morris
Perhaps the strings also serve as a metaphor for binding the artist to her childhood home. As Dasha tells us, she is trying to “accept this space and love it again”. Part of it does seem lovely, with attractive views over trees and river. But in the foreground of this image is the jarring addition of a bank of sandbags to remind us that the country – even if not most of the capital city – is entrenched in the appalling conflict with Russia.
The war is kept well in the background in her monologue. Her interest is in the memories that keep welling from the past. Smokers on the balconies forever flicking ash over clothes drying below. The synchronised cacophony of flushing toilets in the morning and, above all, the din of the radiators as the communal heating system kicks in. This itself is perhaps a symbol of the centralised communist-era bureaucracy.
Not that everything was centrally managed. Repairs, it seems, were left to the residents to sort out which, if done at all, were conducted with Kafkaesque anarchy. There are echoes of Dylan Thomas’ memories of his Welsh childhood in Dasha’s characterisations.
There’s a story behind the production too. Dasha Podoltseva arrived in London with her three children following the invasion in February. She serendipitously met Gail Borrow before returning to Kyiv to re-join her parents, and she has since been making art related to the conflict. But as she says, “We don’t want just to talk about the war. We don’t want just to be seen as victims. But we are trying to talk about our world … we believe it is going to be reshaped in a different way … a better one hopefully. That’s what this project is about.”
One thing the project certainly reinforces is that with Explore the Arch you have always to expect the unexpected. And although it seems likely that this production will get a wider showing – perhaps even internationally – the downside is that there were very few performances locally, and these could only cater for a tiny audience. While the domestic setting may be the Arch’s strongpoint, this work demands – and deserves – much wider dissemination.
• Panelka played at Explore the Arch from 10-17 August. The production team included composer/musician, Sam Brown; sound production, Frank Moon; engineer and video editor, Poorlybeetle.
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