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created by Joeri Smet, Alexander Devriendt and the company, directed by Alexander Devriendt

Ontroerend Goed & Kopergietery, Enwave Theatre, Toronto

February 16-20, 2010

"The Kids Are All Right"

Harbourfront World Stage continues its 2009-10 season with another knockout show.  In only one hour, “Once and for all we’re gonna tell you who we are so shut up and listen” opens a surprising window into  all the pain and joy of adolescence.  People may be so overwhelmed by memories it evokes and by the amazing performances of the all-teenaged cast that they may miss the fact that the performance piece is also about the nature of theatre.  The relation between order and chaos the the common denominator for both themes.

The long English title gives a slightly distorted view of the work, as if it were a youth theatre version of Peter Handke’s “Offending the Audience”.  The original Flemish title is much simpler--“Pubers bestaan niet” (”Adolescents don’t exist”) and it carries multiple meanings the English titles does not have.  Adolescents don’t exist because adults pay them no serious attention, because they themselves do not know who they are and because individual lives negate the clichéd connotations of the group label.

The first and second scenes establish the brilliant pattern for all that follows.  The set consists solely of thirteen chairs--significantly, all of them different--on a bare stage.  After a short introduction from one of the cast members, the thirteen teenagers march in, take a chair and mayhem ensues.  Two boys fwap each other with uninflated balloons.  Two girls fall over backwards in their chairs.  One girls holds a red balloon in front of her crotch.  A girl and a boy grope each other.  Two girls start kissing each other.  A girl plays with a Barbie doll and then tries to set it on fire.  Two girls get into a water fight.  One boy draws words on the floor in chalk.  A girl walks to centre stage and shouts at the audience.  Two girls try to build a pyramid out of plastic glasses but one of the water-fight girls comes over and maliciously kicks it over.  A girl rides on the back of a boy lying on a skateboard.  A boy and girl seem to be smooching inside a garbage bag.  A boy and girl wearing clothes filled with inflated balloons attack each other.  A girl suddenly rides in on a child’s tricycle.  Then a buzzer sounds and the thirteen exits cleaning everything up as they leave.

At this point one might well think that this is just a new version of the happenings in the 1960s and that we’ll have to sit for an hour while the teens do whatever they feel like.  However, the second scene starts and, amazingly, it is an exact repeat of the first scene.  Now we have to readjust of point of view completely.  What seemed to be utter chaos in the first scene was, in fact, an extraordinarily detailed choreographed event.  And, the teen we might have thought were merely being themselves were, in fact, acting.  Creators Joeri Smet and Alexander Devriendt have thus caught us out with our own prejudices.  Quite clearly, the thirteen teens we thought capable only of chaos were obviously also capable of highly disciplined order.

The tension between chaos and order continues right through the show.  In the third scene the teens do a combination of actual and imitation ballet to the Flower Duet from “Lakmé”.  In the fourth the music changes to industrial techno and the teens again seem to be making up all the dance moves.  There’s a pause and they stop.  But when the music starts again they repeat exactly what they had seemingly improvised before only this time ending in a more obviously choreographed group dance routine.  From this point on every scene is a variation of the first two.  In may be in slow motion. The props may simply be thrown on stage to Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”  There is a libidinous version, an angry version, a tripped out version.  One girl, the Barbie doll burner, steps to the front seemingly to recount a personal experience, but soon enough we realize she is just describing what her character experiences on stage from her point of view.  Near the end the pyramid-kicking girl has a monologue that serves as a kind of mea non culpa for teens in general.  She says that she can’t help it if she disobeys rules and tries to push the limits of what she can do.  We might tell her that everything she does has been done before, but she says, “It has not been done by me and it has not been done now.”

“Once and for all ...” reveals adolescents caught in the twilight zone between childhood and adulthood, acting childish and experimenting with what is adult.  No amount of advice can do the growing up for them, only personal experience.  Adolescence is about experimentation, about trying on various personae to see which of them fits best.  The actors play their parts conscious that we the audience are watching them.  But even on stage they are each conscious of the others’ gaze.  Devriendt shows us both the freedom of youth, to fail and succeed, and the social matrix of the peer group in which it plays out, not to mention the hall-full of older onlookers who watch and judge.  We're led in the call-back "Back off", making us say in a cathartic shout what the teens would say to us.

The show ends with an exaggerated version of the first scene that concludes by creating a huge sloppy mess on stage that those in the front row will probably experience rather directly.  The show makes you envy the teens their freedom.  You wonder where did it go?  What were all the choices you made that boxed you into your present position?  Is it age that makes us lose the will to experiment and then to impose that caution on others?

Simultaneously, “Once and for all...” quite literally brings back the sense of “play” in play both through the riotous activities on stage and through constantly teasing us about what is real and what is acted.  “Once and for all” has been on a world-wide tour since its premiere in Ghent in 2008.  What is truly amazing is that the cast has maintained the electricity of freshness and the feeling of spontaneous improvisation all that time.  This is physical theatre at its best and a show not to miss.         

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Cast of Pubers bestaan niet. ©Phile Deprez.