30 July 2024 I 19:30 I National Theatre (Olivier), London
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
It has been a dream of mine to see Complicité's work, where a 25th anniversary revival of Mnemonic at London's National Theatre has monumental promise. Fronted by Simon McBurney's direction, this devised production claims all my praises due to its ability to engage the mind. To unlock the reconstructions of our own memory. Audiences are challenged to be curious about their ancestry, and how we make neurological connections based on past experiences.
I am typically keen on taking images across the theatre, however Mnemonic explores the unorthodox concept of a phone pouch while inside the auditorium. To oblige with this gives me immense comfort, being able to refocus my mind and engross myself inside the boundaries Complicité set. A secondary pouch invites participation, containing a blindfold and leaf, in which we imaging our family tree and nervous systems along the leaf's veins. Taking away our agency to see, the sensation of touch remained with me for later scenes, still holding onto the leaf to return to my personal investments.
Observing the parallels between Ötzi (a 5,000 year old iceman) and the present search for a lost relative, the structure of the piece is seamless. The boundaries of time and place are removed, demonstrating how Ötzi and his memory exists today. How can a chair, a piece of music perhaps, reinvigorate a part of his existence?
The style doesn't always remain a dramatized abstraction, occasionally presenting scenes as if we are watching a conference. This formality positively confuses your perspective on the theatrics of the performance, analysing the science of memory in engaging, humorous formats. You begin to take the subject with added importance, constant shifts that keep the imagination raring.
McBurney's scriptwriting boasts tremendous sophistication in its contemporary relevance. Despite originally being conceived in 1999, the creatives have modernised the text, with inclusion to Ukraine & Gaza conflicts, using our awareness so that we can relate to familiar events and why they may be personally effecting. The opening monologue delivered by Khalid Abdalla is perhaps the standout scene from Mnemonic as it exposes viewers to the complexities of the brain, introducing the stimulus and gifting us a common understanding.
Occasional sequences, accompanied by Michael Levine's set design, see a large translucent screen covering the space. The storytelling feels increasingly rich through this effect. Blurred silhouettes create the impression of fractured memories, a lost past of which we may choose to forget. Nudity briefly features in this production, though the imagery speaks volumes in finding a shared humanity, something any person is familiar with regardless of background.
A major theme of this devised work is the aesthetic of dysfunction and the misaligned. Both Christopher Shutt's sound and Roland Horvath's video design intendedly go out of sync as the real and the recorded are difficult to distinguish. These augment Eileen Walsh's Alice along her paternal discovery, where attempting to revive the history can never be accomplished to full definition. Recorded sound disembodies from the performer, as emotion separates from physical impulse.
Undoubtably, I leave the National Theatre with many questions following Mnemonic, prompting myself to explore Ötzi and the Iceman mystery in greater detail. The importance of this play is within the mystery, to motivate the theorist within us in an intellectually stimulating masterpiece. Even the quarter-century of history behind this piece evokes the curiosity to reproduce and adapt the past.
* I thoroughly enjoy reading through Sarah Corke and Paulina Kominiak's programme design, detailing the journey of Mnemonic.
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