Review - Before Your Very Eyes

Before Your Very Eyes

Presented by COMPO / Gob Squad

For Melbourne Festival

Concept, Design and Direction

Gob Squad (Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Berit Stumpf, Sarah Thom, Bastain Trost, and Simon Will)

Performers: Martha Balthazar, Spencer Bogaert, Faustijn De Ruyck, Gust Hamerlinck, Zoe Luca, Jeanne Vanderkerckhove and Ineke Verhaegen, Voice Over – Rigley Filey, Camera – Philippe Digneffe, Pol Heyvaert and Gob Squad, Video Post Production – Mile Chalcraft, Koeneel Coessens, Sarah Michelle Harrison, Anna Zett and Gob Squal

Before Your Very Eyes rewards with the sheer entertainment of watching beautiful young, energetic, professional actors at work, to say nothing of the interesting perspective it throws onto the art of living, by looking at it through young eyes.  

On a set that has been likened to a fish bowl, after a lively warm up and introduction, under the guidance of a neutral style female voice-over, seven young feisty charismatic actors dress up and ‘act’ growing up.  They seem to work as if in a game without guile or pretense and each child has a very strong ‘stage presence’.

Masterfully, three or so years ago when this part of a three-tiered project commenced, the creators had set aside considerable recorded footage of the youthful participants so as to be able to incorporate it in future performances.  The payoff, of this, is now. The younger children interview their older selves.  There is often something profound about the probing questions of a child to an adult.  In their concern for a child’s piece of mind an adult will perhaps censor or moderate their responses.  There is something almost mind boggling about the questing of the child actors to their older selves who are guised in the characters of their ‘interpreted’ mature adult selves.   

Very strikingly we are watching lively energetic performers who do not seem to have inflated egos and are not posturing.  What could have been a voyeuristic experience is not, particularly, because of the forthright commitment of the performers and their representation of themselves and thankfully they are not in the least sexualized.

This is one of three shows that I choose from a restricted list this year although I did see others.  All three After Life, We’re Gonna Die and this Before Your Very Eyes are really about what we value in life.  They all discuss death or and dying in an open way leaving space for ones own take, interpretation and thought processes.

Demanding but Satisfying Theatre.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)