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Chornobyl Story Conscious Theatre Holden Street Theatres Until Sat 6 March Fringe has two meanings: bordering or just outside the recognised or orthodox form or group, as well as being a border of loose threads. Conscious Theatre's 'Chornobyl Story' meets these criteria. Chornobyl is a story worth telling; the failure of the nuclear plant, its safeguards and the resultant cover-up strike a particular resonance within South Australia. Chornobyl was a disaster of unprecedented proportions irrevocably changing the way of life of millions, making vast areas uninhabitable and directly, or indirectly, causing the death of thousands. 'Chornobyl Story' introduces us to this catastrophe while reducing it to a human and understandable level. We are introduced to the farming Bandura family, babusia (grandmother) Svitlana who narrates the story from her new home in Kiev, dido (poppa) Oleksander, the full extended family and their traditional way of life. We also meet Serhiy and Nadiya, the younger Bandura family who live in the prefabricated town of Pripyat that houses the power station's workers. The Slavonic (sic) legend of the on-going and bitter conflict between Chornobog the underworld dwelling Black God of Death and Byelobog, the earthdwelling God of Love is introduced to provide another level of topical understanding. This legend is intermeshed into the present day conflict between nature and industry and we are away. Number four reactor blows and we witness the measures taken to stop the contamination, the resultant official blunders and cover-ups. It is a brave attempt to cover this much ground in any sort of theatre let alone a new musical piece. This attempt is one of its failings. At least two of the scenes - Nadiya's balcony scene where she sings a song to the stars and the overblown sequence in which we witness the reactor blowing up - were reiterations of what had already been seen and heard. As such, the story suffered from excess and the immediacy and emotional impact of the previous scenes were lessened. In a piece like Chornobyl Story, the setting is known and performers should not have to struggle with accents that can affect the strength and quality of their performance; in this case stronger direction was necessary as accents wavered all around and affected the integrity of the piece. Performances ranged from the generally strong ; Eugene Raggio's Mykhaylo, Jason Veliskou's Petr to the okay, Anne Timmis' singing Svitlana to the vapid, with most ranging in between. Video, still photos or computer generated graphics reinforced the on-stage action but were sometimes overused and distracting to the audience. Mention must be made of Belinda Gehlert the violinist. Chornobyl Story was a brave attempt to show the human cost of rampant industry without safeguards, a Koyaansquatsi set in the Ukraine. It fails by trying to be too encompassing, with its general lack of direction and inability to immediately connect with the audience. That this happens doesn't hide the potential of the piece or of many of the people involved. |
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