The characters are trapped and you are too – as you are made to feel every minute of the runtime
*Spoilers below*
Light. A single figure appears on the corner of the stage. The stage is bare, almost. On the other side is a set of three blue chairs, a red ticket dispenser attached to the arm of the one on the end. This is the only piece of scenery that will remain for the entirety of the play. The music throbs and the figure in the corner moves – small movements, at first, in his little patch of space before he gradually takes over the entire stage with full-body gyrations. He’s jumping one moment and face-down on the ground the next. It’s frenetic. Repetitive. The music quickens and the lighting is cut off square by square like it’s trying to catch up with and box in this dancer that never stops. It’s an almost furious expression of dance in the face of literal darkness.
This is the heart of Arlington. First performed in Galway in 2016, Enda Walsh’s three-act play is a mishmash that collides traditional theatre with dance theatre to tell the story of Isla. Set in a dystopian world, Isla is trapped by herself in a tower that is constantly being surveilled by cameras and an anonymous voice that tells her what to do, until one day, the voice changes and a tenuous human connection is formed between her and the man the new voice belongs to. Arlington, in essence, celebrates the power of love, connections, expression, art, and storytelling in a world where these things are controlled, repressed and outright banished.
In the Scottish premiere of Arlington, dance-theatre company Shotput makes a valiant attempt to bring this out-of-the-box play to vivid life on the Tron Theatre’s intimate stage. It is a valiant attempt because the material is not straightforwardly pleasing – in fact, it is at times difficult. While the show is only ninety minutes long, the lack of an interval to break up the tension makes it feel interminable. In a way, it is the perfect artistic choice – you are made to endure the confinements, and empathise with the characters’ own unending restrictions – but while your body is captive, your mind starts to wander and as a result, the questions posed by the show do not land as effectively as intended.
This is a shame as what Arlington tries to explore is worthwhile. In an increasingly totalitarian global landscape where world governments are in an arms race to spy on its own citizens, the ability of two people to connect under and, in some ways, ultimately resist the watchfulness of an overreaching authority is more relevant than ever. It would also be amiss to neglect to mention a delightful little detail of the set where the surveillance desk has a supermarket meal deal scattered over it, a reminder that those who participate in the machinery that oppresses are not cartoonish villains but very real human beings who eat and sleep just like any others, who go to work and clock in and clock out just like any others – the banality of evil captured in a can of Red Bull.
But just as the can of Red Bull is swept in the rubbish bin, Arlington is optimistic that we have it in ourselves to fight back. The one who surveils Isla is also the one who frees her, his transformation captured in how he has his back towards you in the first act but you see him in full view in the last act – his face bloodied but defiant, convinced that he has changed the world for the better, even if for just the one person.
This show runs at Tron Theatre until 25th October. It then embarks on a tour of Scotland at Traverse Theatre – 6 to 8th November.