REVIEW: The Guest, or Se Gæst, at Seaton Delaval Hall
Anthony Lo-Giudice pulls out all the stops
Anthony Lo-Giudice is a choreographer who goes where others would fear to tread, deploying puppets, percussionists and spoken text to tell stories in striking but problematic venues.
He challenges the definition of what a dance layman might imagine choreography to be.
To go with an artist’s eye and a musician’s ear he has a head bursting with ideas and if they don’t always make for a wholly coherent narrative, there are ample compensations.
He conjures up memorable spectacles and presents audiences with moments of startling beauty.
His latest collaborative creation, The Guest – or Se Gæst if you prefer the old English which runs through it, adding to its strangeness – follows on from Roma, which toured three years ago and will have prepared those who saw it for this even more ambitious undertaking.
In that production, with its live music and theatricality, he explored his own heritage, being the son of an English mother and a Sicilian father, brought up on Teesside and feeling he didn’t quite fit in.
Here the themes are bigger and broader, alluding to the history of England, with reference to Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and – venturing back even further in time – drawing on the Old Testament tale of Jonah and the whale.
Released from the big beast’s belly by a fisherwoman, this Jonah finds himself on a foreign shore, dependent on the islanders who take him in.
This is a community of mixed and febrile emotion where compassion is mixed with curiosity and suspicion. Jonah’s fate seems to hang on whichever gains the upper hand.
It’s a story that feels very current. On the day I saw it, rival bands of flag and placard wielding protestors took to the streets of Newcastle, immigration at least partly the motivating factor.
What’s to be done about the strangers arriving on our shores? And how to save the natural world (another strand running through this piece)?
In the central hall of Seaton Delaval Hall, where bats frequent the rafters and cosiness is an alien concept, the drama of The Guest was writ large in the shadows on the walls.
That some of them were of performers sporting grotesque fish masks (we’re not talking Nemo here) added to the unsettling nature of the unfolding tale.
The integral music, more sound effect on occasion, rang out with eerie clarity from a notably classy trio.
They’re Andrea Harris with her haunting vocals; Hannabiell Sanders, virtuosic on trombone as ever and revelatory on steel pan, eliciting gentle, dancing melodies; and Brendan Murphy, here, there and everywhere, on guitar, on percussion instruments I can’t even name and frequently breaking into guttural spiels of old English.
It makes for a rare old cocktail – and we haven’t even got to the dancers!
There must be easier gigs. Boy, do they work hard! Their commitment, as they become by turn dancer, puppeteer and actor, can’t be faulted, and Caroline Reece is a revelation.
A hugely experienced dancer in the autumn of her career, she’s centre stage here and absolutely brilliant, physically expressive and delivering Anthony’s lines with aplomb.
Alex Thirkle nimbly conveys Jonah’s vulnerability while Michaela Gebremedhim, Molly Procter and Alex Rowland retain their poise beneath fish masks, a suit of armour and other complexities.
Could I, hand on heart, relate the story of The Guest in minute detail? Er, no. But my guess is that it will evolve as Anthony, ever the perfectionist, irons out the wrinkles. I certainly wouldn’t deter anyone from seeing (or hearing) it.
Coming performances are at York Minster (October 9), Queen’s Hall Arts Centre, Hexham (October 18), North Shields Fish Market (October 25), Auckland Palace (November 2) and Dance City (December 11).
Ahead of the performance of The Guest at Seaton Delaval Hall, an impressive troupe of young dancers coached by Anthony Lo-Giudice performed a piece which they’d choreographed themselves. It was quite a long piece but beautifully done - the perfect starter ahead of the main course.