Dance Base, Edinburgh
August 14, 2016
Róisín O’Brien
Dressed impeccably and holding sheets of A4 paper, a performer enters against a white backdrop and stark lighting, his face impassive. Your Majesties opens in this inhuman, calculated place, a sterile environment of clean speech-writing and safe PR. As it unfolds though, the audience are made increasingly more uncomfortable as bizarre and silly movements are placed alongside debates about war and peace. This anxiety is Your Majesties’ strength; even when the atmosphere gives way to infectious enthusiasm, the work remains troubling and interrogative.
Your Majesties works through Obama’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. The speech is read out and impressively memorized in full by Alex Deutinger, interspersed gradually with ever more demanding movement. Your Majesties explores ideas of authenticity and performance in politics, and so Obama provides an interesting case study. While other politicians would more easily suggest themselves for fakery or dishonesty, Obama’s reputation for sincerity allows for a complicated and nuanced investigation.
The piece doesn’t give an outright verdict on the machinations of power, and this uncertainty is continued in its atmosphere. Deutinger is accompanied by Marta Navaridas, who stands in the audience directing his movements. At first, Deutinger merely gestures, or shuffles his papers. Then, his hand wags, oddly. He shifts in his hips. He grimaces. It becomes very uncomfortable, for his speech steadfastly continues as his body jerks or malfunctions. The concept takes a while to ‘work’, but this allows time for a consideration of form and content, and how much we are susceptible to surface details. I really appreciated being in this uncertain place, of not knowing for some time if the performers could ‘pull it off.’
As Deutinger’s movements become more preposterous (Navaridas kicks into a cartwheel, leaps around her box or starts thrusting), you can’t help but smile. Moving into the audience, he winks or shakes people hands, while Navaridas moves through motions of giving him green, yellow or red cards. One of its main weaknesses as a whole is how much you struggle to see Navaridas’ contribution. Perhaps this is on purpose, for we never fully see who’s pulling the strings, but Deutinger does take over the piece.
Deutinger is a captivating performer: his ability to keep the tone of his voice regular and articulated while his body moves through a variety of poses is eerie. His head often seems to float on his shoulders, a wobbly part balanced precariously on its sinewy support. Navaridas provides a contrast in her glib, overt and, at times, lewd puppetry, lending Deutinger almost a certain innocence.
Your Majesties lays itself bare before its audience, who very much dictate the mood of the evening depending on how much they find the work funny, surreal, or incomprehensible. But it is nonetheless a quietly confident piece, a moment for reflection in amongst the bustle of the Edinburgh Fringe.