'Institute' - Play review

Last year at roughly this time I went on a school (college…) trip that completely changed my opinion of physical theatre. I am a Drama student, but policy is at Peter Symonds that students can go on trips of other subjects/departments if it isn't filled up by students from its subject. When offered if I wanted to go with the Performance Studies crowd to go and see Gecko's 'Missing' I though "why not?", it was a chance to see another play and broaden my experience and I knew some of the people going so it was a fun thing to do as a group. If my memory were that sharp I would write a review entirely dedicated to last year's 'Missing', but it isn't. A few details I remember were that no two characters spoke the same language, there was excellent use of puppetry and there was an excellent use of lighting effects - and of course, physical acting. But what I took away from the whole experience, though I can't remember individual details after this much time, was 'holy crap'.

Gecko's performances are like a very special type of drug, the experience of the high itself may fade, but the memory of the feeling lasts and makes you want more.
I've been following their Facebook page ever since the first show, rapt for a second encounter, and they kept posting videos of rehearsal of their new show 'Institute', but after a while the videos stopped and I forgot about it over the summer, with things like HYT and Wuthering Heights and, oh, my actual A-levels getting in the way. However, when I found out that the Performance Studies lot were planning another trip, to see this year's 'Institute' my initial reaction was 'HELL YEAH'. My second reaction was dismay as I thought I wouldn't be able to do my options for my drama exam and would have it chosen for me. But then in that actual drama lesson, my drama teacher said she was going off on the trip and did anyone want to come last minute and I was sold, I simply had to see it after last year. A quick text to mum and I was on the coach to Bristol… I may still be in the college's debt, but it was worth it.

I actually went to see two plays last week, on Tuesday I saw the National Youth Theatre doing 'Macbeth' in London's Ambassadors Theatre, and on Thursday I went to see this at the Bristol Old Vic.

The reason for this shamefully long preamble and ramble is so that when I say 'I was excited and I wasn't disappointed', you can see how easily I might have been disappointed given all the hype I'd built myself up to and by deduction how spectacular it must have been for it to not disappoint.

As usual I am scatty in that this was last Thursday and it is now of course the next Friday, but that's cause I had to review the NYT's 'Macbeth' and then do actual college work (I know, right.). Usually this is my excuse for making a fairly vague review by saying 'I can't remember such and such' but this 'Institute' is a whole different story.

They say it took two years for them to produce this play, with hours and hours (multiplied by months and months) of physical exploration. Physical exploration is a term that used to confuse me I have two arms and two legs, a head, elbows, knees which bend one way and put you in hospital if you bend them the other - sigh - so how can you explore this, how can these people create something new with bodies which everyone has. There was one scene in this where the four characters played something akin to ring-aring-aroses, except that in this variation you shared sticks with the people either side of you, on in each hand, and the left hand was for the person to your right and vice-versa, so the sticks were crossed. Gecko literally made me have an epiphany while watching their play, the movement was so fluid, so energetic, so inhuman, so human, so everything, that I achieved a whole new level of respect for physical theatre that I never had before. That's when I saw what physical exploration must be, what it must produce, this incredible level of muscle memory and physical trust for each other which was unbelievable - they seemed to be trusting each other's lives on their abilities to swing sticks! I went about explaining this badly, but Gecko are a truly marvellous physical theatre company, who achieved things I didn't believe possible until I saw them do it. Gecko theatre are miracle makers.

This is not the thing I described, but this was another thing they did

The story telling was both moving and ingenious. It was moving for telling the whole story in terms of emotion and feeling, not saying anything outright, and was ingenious for this reason too. When the programme said 'stories pour from open drawers' they were not shitting, that is literally the effect created. One of the characters entire life's memories where kept in a filing cabinet, and he superbly acted his emotional responses to each one as he flipped through (and, rather humorously his friend kept flipping back to the memory of him having sex). The friend (I'm terrible with names) had a cupboard which opened up to be a booth in a restaurant, with a past lover created through puppetry by the other 3 cast, until he tries to open the cupboard one time to find that someone has locked it, and he can't access the memory. Another character witnesses a loved one dying over and over again every time he opens their bedroom door, in the way a harrowing memory repeats itself endlessly in a restless mind, and the falling body and the man trying to rescue it are suspended in slow motion so they never quite meet each time it falls, just like a nightmare. You're never quite sure if Gecko had an interesting idea/story to tell and wanted to come up with a way to tell it, or they thought of an amazing way to tell a story and the interesting story came from it, and that is the wonder of their work. The emotional effect was at times devastating, as it is supposed to be a play about how we care for one another, the title 'institute' is kind of clue for how well that turns out. There was comedy in there a lot, but I am drawn to tragedy, and this play appealed to both halves of the audience. There was also again a brilliant use of lighting and puppetry and projection and music you have no idea how good these people are. The only thing which might ruin it is the ending dance. Maybe my attention lapsed right before the end and it's my problem not the company, but whereas I got the rest of the play, the ending dance I completely had no clue what on earth it was about. But you'll have to watch it to see if you do.

I'm giving 'Institute' a 9.8/10 (back to using decimals) as it was a phenomenal production but at times I may have had difficulty making sense of it - but in a play about the 'nature' of care and involving the inner workings of the mind, maybe that shouldn't be taken as a criticism.

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