Love is a high-wire act performed without a safety net.
Emma Rice’s phenomenal reinterpretation of the Cornish myth of Tristan and Yseult has lost nothing of its energy, joy and power as it returns to the Citizens Theatre 10 years on from its last revival. The Club of the Unloved is once again open to all-comers.
Seeing it for the second time, one wonders whether it could possibly be as good as one remembers from first encountering it a decade ago. The answer is a triumphant yes.
This show deconstructs everything – myth, theatrical convention and the human heart as it continues to bring joy and wonder to its audience. Love in all its messy, destructive and intoxicating glory is laid bare with frantic and breathless storytelling.
Central to the production is the Club of the Unloved – a chorus of nerds ever trying to spot love in others having been unlucky in love themselves. These passion twitchers have binoculars and notebooks and are just as interested in the audience as in anything going on on stage. More than stagehands and more than singers and musicians, they drive the story as eventually their numbers are swelled by the main protagonists. each discovering for themselves the cruelties of desire.
Central to the stage though is a large mast-like structure surrounded by scaffolding. The mast is rigged with enough ropes and pulleys to allow the lovers Tristan and Yseult to soar . Love, betrayal and agony swoop in and inhabit the characters who find themselves strung up, elevated and hoisted aloft as their emotions are hung out to dry.
Although the dizzying passion of the two lovers is the main event, two other characters stand out. The cuckolded King Mark, played by Edward Rowe turns out not to be the tyrant intent on revenge that convention demands he ought to be. Violence is overcome with compassion when he discovers that his wife has run off with his friend. The cycle of retaliation and retribution is broken into pieces by mercy. Meanwhile, Tom Fox’s Brangian (Yseult’s maid) provides more than just comic relief. Her pathos when she realises that she would give anything of herself for her queen when no queen would do anything for her is a moment of bitter sorrow.
This is a piece of theatre that is hilarious in the face of human tragedy. The joy and the humour make the losses feel all the more overwhelming when they come. This is an anarchic meditation on the pain of desire.
Through all this, the audience experiences the billowing sails of passion and betrayal. They too have been looking for love all evening. They get to see it in all its raw destructive power. In the end, they find themselves fully enrolled members in the Club of the Unloved.
And they rise to their feet and cry out for more.
This is a masterpiece of physical theatre – pure, raw and euphoric.