Theatre for One

The door closes behind me. I’m in a small, dimly lit room. A girl sits in a chair, leafing through pages of a book on the desk in front of her. She’s talking on the phone.

“…I feel closer to him here,” she says.

The girl shows no sign of noticing my entry, but instead gets up and walks to a table directly behind me, so I have to step out of her way. She picks up a snow globe, shakes it.

She’s not mad, and she’s not being rude. I’m at a Barbican theatre production (or, depending how you look at it, you could say I’m in a Barbican theatre production). Helium, billed as  a “short adventure for one”, is just 35 minutes long and only admits one audience member at a time.

I’ve only been given the bare bones of the story, and I wonder what I might be required to do. I know only this: every year, on her birthday, Bella is given a box from her grandfather with a single helium balloon inside. It’s his way of telling her something, and Bella is on a quest to discover what.

On my arrival I receive an invitation for a “birthday party, on the 13th of February”. It’s the first of many clues. Once I’m in, the action takes places in a number of different – and really quite compact – rooms. I’m close to the performers, but they never directly interact with me.

After I’ve met Bella I find myself inside a theatre, then a plane, then a hospital room… There’s a blue-grey gargoyle – who also turns out to be an important part of the story – opposite me, pacing up and down, troubled. Over the airwaves comes the voice of Bella’s grandfather.

“Oh, you thought I was addressing her?” he asks, suddenly. “No, no, no. Bella has the diary – I am speaking to you, stowaway.” Just like that, I become an important part of the action.

The great thing about Helium is the way it keeps you guessing. The company behind the show, Slung Low, have a reputation for originality – in their style of performance and the venues they use (they did one show in a car park, another through an iPod) – and this show, the winner of the 2008 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award, is no different.

Or, I suppose the point should be that it’s very different. There’s the clues – the snow globe, the periodic table, a playing card, the gargoyle – to help you work out the mystery, and the use of digital media is inventive – in the plane, the hatch at my feet swings open and it appears that there is a city on fire beneath me.

In the final room I stand still, waiting, after the action has stopped. A steward opens the door. “It’s time to leave,” he whispers. Like a child at a particularly good birthday party, I don’t want to.  Far from being an intimidating, experiencing theatre at ground level is a lot of fun – especially, as there’s a riddle to work out.

We pass through a room filled with boxes. Bella’s grandfather’s boxes. One of them is addressed to me, to take away. Inside it is a helium balloon. 

Posted by Ruth Stokes in Other | September 11, 2008 2:00PM |