The Wedding, a production by the internationally acclaimed and award-winning physical theatre company Gecko under the artistic director Amit Lahav, explores the idea of being wed to one's vocation. In order to depict a broken society where striving people must endure a symbolic wedding as a process of initiation into a world of suits, telephones, and anachronisms, this piece blends dancing, sound, storyboarding, and reflection.
The Wedding raises questions about what it means to be married to a career, friends, family, or even a partner. For the most part, the audience is led to examine the contrast between the excitement of a wedding day and the reality of what marriage may be through the use of interpretive dance.
The wedding alluded to in the title is not a couple's wedding. It's the union of the individual with the system, not the other way around. This remarkable ensemble of nine foreign actors takes the audience on a journey into a dystopian world where we are all brides, bound to society. This magnificent and emotionally intense performance offers change and optimism.
The Barbican Theatre is a stunning and very enormous venue. It was massive, rapid, and crowded. The play was an intense, wonderful work of theatre that best described itself as a combination between interpretative dance and symbolic Victorian theatre.
The majority of the play was written in a double language, thus separating the spectator from the narrative. a strategy that allowed the audience to focus on the play's theme. The interpretation of the dance and the movements of the players on stage were the emphasis of this performance.
As for the play’s theme, the actors were born into the world through a fun green slide that landed on a soft bed of teddy bears, representing childhood. A symbol that people had to give up as they moved into adulthood with a symbolic wedding dress, symbolising the fact that we are all wedded to society with all the couplings that we had with each other, with careers, and with our thoughts and dreams.
Some people were given great suitcases at birth and taught how to use the luggage, which stood for the labour of the west. Midway through, the lower classes made a comedic appearance out of a suitcase, which served to balance things out. The man who tried to enter the middle classes but was beaten with a baseball bat represented the lower classes in this gloomy and brutal incident. The brutality of the system in general and the classes in particular is what the drama is all about.
Generally, the music was excellent, and the choreography and dance were flawless and timed perfectly. Everyone ought to see it, and I for one hope to go back there again.
