Over the last fifteen years or so, UK theatre has done well at creating a nineteenth-century physical theatre aesthetic. Sparse structures, mops, cloths and washing wielded against a backdrop of lovely AV have served vigorous versions of the classics such as the NT/Bristol Old Vic Jane Eyre, and even Katie Mitchell’s mechanical deconstructions of Dostoyevsky.
Ockham's Razor’s Tess certainly occupies this dynamic space, with one key difference: the lead discipline is circus. And while contemporary circus is no stranger to narrative storytelling, placing this genre on a dance stage with subtle narration and mime does feel delicately different.
This version of perhaps Hardy’s most tragic novel is effortlessly fluid, employing causal storytelling while embracing a mixed bag of well selected tricks to convey character and situation. The magician-like hoop skills of Tess’s manipulative lover Alec D’Urberville, played by Joshua Frazer, make a fitting metaphor. The balancing, climbing and descending acts of all characters as the ensemble transform wooden boards into barns, landscapes and a crucifix form touching moving pictures of strife and hope.
The final denouement in which Tess, played physically by Lila Naruse, does a silk routine from the scaffold in her hanging sequence is an irresistible union of form and story.
Circus and Hardy’s Wessex may have more in common than we might suppose. The form had a boom in the nineteenth century with hundreds of circuses dotting the UK, combining the interests of labourers and landowners from clowning to equestrianism. Hardy’s arena equally mixes together the classes with potent results.
The characterisation of Tess herself, as a visceral being who experiences loss, love and work through fully embodied action, is matched by Daniel Denton’s evocative and stylish video design that draws on nature and the cosmos to put Hardy’s people in context. It even features italicised writing denoting the phases of the moon in the way a modern moon almanac might. In doing so, the show also holds fast to the themes of Hardy’s universe while tapping into a resurgence of interest in ancient forms of Magik and Paganism.
The last piece of narration from Tess, which is carefully delivered throughout by Macadie Amoroso, is:
"I do know that our souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive... A very easy way to feel 'em go is to lie on the grass at night, and look straight up at some big bright star; and by fixing your mind upon it you will soon find that you are hundreds and hundreds o' miles away from your body, which you don't seem to want at all."
As a woman named after one of Hardy’s tragic heroines, I was always going to enjoy this production. But Okham’s Razor has made a show that, by exploring the extremities of what bodies can do, conveys the wild consequences of emotion in Hardy’s classic.