Red Forest

…Young Vic, Waterloo

Performed by Belarus Free Theatre.

90 minutes without an interval...a mix of dance, mime, singing, music, video and voice-over…a string of vignettes of real events of recent years seamlessly joined together.…war, drought, famine, tsunami, nuclear accidents, corporate destruction of communities, gang-rape by soldiers… Ivory Coast, Brazil, Algeria, Morocco, Belarus, Japan, USA, the Spanish border…

We were booked to see Lear at the Union Theatre but I found it had been cancelled when I went to pick up the tickets an hour and a half before it was due to start. The nearby Young Vic had two returns for the sold-out Red Forest and we made a snap decision to buy them knowing nothing about the production. It was a good decision.

My text to my brother Tim earlier in the afternoon:
‘I’ve just read the synopsis of Lear on Wikipedia. I think I’ll get confused by who’s who, how they are all related and which side they are on but the gist is simple. The play starts with a miserable, dysfunctional and warring family and its in-laws. As the play progresses, the family gets ever more miserable. By the end, they’re all dead. It’s probably not for anyone feeling even slightly down and definitely not for anyone remotely suicidal.’

Tim’s text to me:
‘I’ve seen it before. A vain, foolish king trusts the wrong members of his family and ends up with nothing and mad and abandoned. It makes you feel better because you convince yourself you wouldn’t be that dumb.’

Lear sounds like stupid and greedy people who choose to take part in mutual self-destruction. Red Forest is a relentless concentration of human misery and death beyond the control of those who suffer. Red Forest should have been intensely depressing but it made bleakness beautiful. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.