Wayne McGregor reimagines Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s 1982 cult with multimedia projection, extraordinary soundscape and a powerful ensemble.
Wayne McGregor’s reimagines Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s 1982 cult classic with multimedia projection, an extraordinary soundscape, and a powerful ensemble. However, it diverges significantly from Henson and Oz’s puppetry fantasia, which centred on a quest for a crystal and explored dichotomies of light and dark, justice and evil. With Isaiah Hull’s voiceover (“The next generation pays the price”), it reveals the production’s embedded theme of environmental crisis. It subtly addresses nature and our mother earth in peril, intricately woven into the narrative (if there is any), avoiding cheap politicisation. Instead, it presents a profound humanitarian concern through the lens of human physicality and visual presentation.
Film designer, Ravi Deepres, beautifully manoeuvres the projection at the very beginning: a giant colourful goldfish appears on the water-like big scrim in the front, instantly transforms the stage into a realm of underwater. Dancers behind the scrim bend their bodies and slide in all dimensions as fluid as water itself, which seamlessly intertwines with the aquatic imagery of goldfish. Deepres also creates other scenes that implicitly calling back the show’s environmental theme, such as a photo of a fossilised prehistoric bird burned into fire, and a singing red eyeball (a bit creepy though!) transforms into a forest ablaze.
Joel Cadbury also steals the show through his composition of music and soundscape, featuring a dark, horrifying yet occasionally serene and cosmic auditory experience blending string instruments with modern sound effects. Its ambience folds the universe and defies linear time, leaving the audience immersed into a temporal limbo until the very last minute of the show’s conclusion.
The concluding scene feels somewhat cliched and weak, featuring a low-resolution model of a tree and a pair of dancers possibly signifying Adam and Eve. Such a motif does reflect a message of reborn and new life, retrieving the earlier projected-scene of a supernova explosion. Nevertheless, following the show’s earlier grandeur, the final moments leave a lingering sense of blandness and dissatisfaction.
It is a bit regrettable that I strongly sense the ensemble is somewhat eclipsed by the dazzling multimedia projections and the ever-lasting soundscape. Despite their undeniable strong physicality, they are just remained behind the scrim. Their performances are as ferocious as fire in the burn-forest scene with their batwing-sleeve costumes designed by Philip Delamore, and as weighty as earth, depicted in a scene where they slump over, dragging themselves across the stage with heavy steps. One scene closer to the end is definitely a climax, where all the dancers don black attire, showing the audience their true capabilities and their physicality to full potency, which affirms McGregor’s choreographic brilliance in crafting such impact.
Universe: A Dark Crystal is miles away from its original, but it retains equally fantastic, imaginary and impactful to tell the story of our mother earth as the one and only heroine. Its brilliance would shine much more if the dancers are granted greater prominence and more highlighted scenes.