Performance Review: Gallathea by John Lyly

Abstract

rushing to its conclusion, 5.3, the echo scene, always provides a moment of stasis and recollection before the murders of the final scene. The blue-toned filter lost its surreal feel, instead of enhancing a mood of melancholy, in which the pure tones of the Duchess’s repeated words reasserted her loving presence after the sinister soundtrack of the prison scenes before she was muted forever. In violent contrast, the last scene was dominated by bloody redness, with video being used to suggest the skull beneath the skin of Bosola and the Aragonnian brothers as they met their deaths. Only when Delio (Andy Owens) appeared, in something resembling natural lighting, holding a baby girl in his arms – a Duchess still? – did the production loose its unnervingly tight hold. As a connective technology that for the past year has primarily been used in the home, Zoom theatre has often been associated with intimacy and the ways in which the domestic setting has been turned into a cultural space during the pandemic. The main achievement of Creation’s Malfi is its successful experimentation with techniques for envisioning psychosis and trauma, and the deep psychological layers its video superimpositions portray.