Civilisation – Shoreditch Town Hall

The wonderful Civilisation returns for the final leg of its (seemingly final) tour, bringing to an end a remarkable run of shows since it first premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2019. I first saw it just over a year ago at the New Diorama Theatre and felt compelled to revisit its richly rewarding world in the bigger space of Shoreditch Townhall. Its return also means that Jaz Woodcock-Stewart has directed three of my favourite shows that I have seen this year; Civilisation follows the extraordinary Gulliver’s Travels at the Unicorn Theatre and the thorny, fascinatingly brilliant Electric Rosary at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. Civilisation is arguably the simplest of the three, certainly were you to describe its plot, though this would ignore its magical intricacy, the delicacy of the choreography (by Morgann Runacre-Temple with the company), and its enthralling tone which transports you to a place quite different from any other show I have seen.

Civilisation is triumph of juxtaposition, contrasting a detailed, highly naturalistic performance of the banal side of living on during grieving, with a heightened, fantastical dance show in tandem, as three ambiguous spirit-like dancers enter the grieving woman’s flat, moving in time to music that may or may not exist in her head. The soundtrack is an eclectic mixture of dance classics (ABBA and Boney M.), avant-garde compositions (Scott Walker) and classical works (Bach), though the pounding volume of the music generates not only immersion but an enhanced intensity of silence when it cuts away. Often the woman’s stage action is simple and sparse, and the relative emptiness of the flat (designed by Charlotte Espiner) is felt all the more in the larger space. Yet the effect is like that of an extraordinary painter’s sketch, where you marvel at how relatively few strokes of a paintbrush create something so marvellous and alive.

In the 1960s, W.H. Auden argued that it is impossible to represent work on stage truly or accurately, as theatre fundamentally and inherently elides and speeds things up. On stage, time bends and stretches like elastic – a fact that is certainly true in several places here. Yet Civilisation is one of a fascinating array of plays which treat Auden’s proclamation as an implicit challenge, whether consciously or not. (Recent examples include the amazing post-argument clearing up scene in Tom Fool, revived at the Orange Tree Theatre this year, the ostensibly real actions of the volunteer beach-goers during the opera Sun & Sea, and the distinctive silences during conversation and labour in the often-naturalistic plays of Annie Baker.)

Civilisation does not play out in exact real time. For a start, there are time jumps (such as during the funeral), but it does show some literal events, virtually unchanged and indistinguishable from reality. A real egg is cooked and eaten, and several rounds of Bop-It play out before us. It is part of the show’s gesture that everyday actions like changing a duvet are represented literally and fully, invested with an unbearable poignancy. Getting into bed, it at first seems the lingering scent of her late partner on the pillowcase is a source of comfort, but it quickly becomes too noxious a reminder of what has been lost. She strips the bed, only to find her bandwidth for replacing the duvet cover is low, howling inside it at how irritating an ordeal this fiddly task has become, now compounded by grief. The realness and relatability of the actions makes them feel all the more devastating. Similar is the cruel bureaucracy she encounters when ringing up HMRC to inform them of her partner’s death – the automated voice forcing her acknowledge and vocalise their passing.

Furthermore, it is precisely the intensity and focus on the play’s naturalism that makes its parallel dance narrative so extraordinary and radical. The mundanity is perfectly calibrated to become devastatingly transfixing, while transcendental dancers run amok, weaving in and out, detached but in no way malevolent. Somehow, they complement the woman’s experience, transforming the feeling of the space, soothing and supple in the thickly claustrophobic atmosphere of grief. The potential voyeurism of the situation seems rerouted towards more therapeutic aims; they are mischievous, yet kind – and thus so we can be too, learning and caring, rather than merely snooping. Their purpose is entirely unknown, yet the play is powered by the striking juxtaposition. One of its most common gestures is to suddenly pull the music away, confronting us with the near-silent emptiness of the woman’s home, while the dancers continue undeterred. It is a play which takes places in two realities simultaneously, occupying the same space but never touching.

The dancers lend themselves to broad, exploratory interpretation. Perhaps the play is attempting to capture a hopeful belief that there is a higher purpose to tragic events – some guiding logic, or a sense that premature death is all part of something bigger. It offers us potentially divine choreography, arguably dramaturgical proof that, however inexplicable, there is something more profound at work than a simple void where a person once was, even if the grieving woman remains unaware. A transformative, artistic presence persists.

The dancers are there, but not really there. In many ways this crepuscular half-reality is the show’s main theme, suggesting that our relationship to the internet leads us into a twilight of digital escapism. The woman uses the internet as a portal, an escape hatch from grief, but it is a space that seems woefully inadequate to such a heavy task. She switches from tab to tab, video to video, nothing holding her attention or scratching the itch that keeps her Googling. She watches porn at the kitchen table. Grief here is a numbing experience, but so too is the internet itself – a distracting sedative. The blasts of Celebs Go Dating and Dragon’s Den we hear are hilariously banal, part of a self-administered cocktail designed to subdue her melancholy mind. Civilisation dramatises a phenomenon which Patricia Lockwood’s 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This would go on to consider at length, also presenting a character’s grief from a personal tragedy across the thresholds of online and offline. Civilisation shares its presentation of the internet experience as profoundly digressive, flicking from one source of stimulation to another, but never in a way that transforms or truly alleviates the pain – only distracting from it.

Instead, it is a hiding place for the mind, a source of refuge in your pocket, and something to fill the time when human interaction is impossible. There is only one other character in the play who the woman is actually aware of, and in a beautifully staged scene, her friend visits, trying her best to be supportive. Rather than discuss the agonising mixture of raw feelings in words though, the two women simply pass a two-player Bop-It back and forth, following its instructions to ‘pull it’, ‘twist it’, ‘drink it’, ‘answer it’, and so forth. At a time when life stretches out ahead, empty and bleak, with little to do, the simple commands are gently comforting, giving a momentary illusion of purpose, at least for a few minutes.

After a lull in the game, the grieving woman attempts a misjudged kiss. The friend gently pushes her away, but the atmosphere has changed uncomfortably within an instant. Again, Woodcock-Stewart keeps the scene near-wordless, the woman hastily apologising and reverting to Bop-It. She passes it back to her friend on cue, but the instructions are ignored. She tries to force her to talk instead. Yet, the grieving woman restarts the game and just plays on her own, desperate for her friend to leave without words or fuss.

The final moments of the play switch tone into something clearer, as the fug of grief lifts, the woman’s emotions seemingly forgotten for a while during a fast-talking telephone call about fiscal strategy. Seemingly she works for a politician, on the economics and policy side of things, and she argues her financial case with a direct frankness completely unlike the understandable hopelessness she has until then conveyed. It acts as a powerful reminder of people’s many selves, especially in the wake of difficult and traumatic events. Whatever happens to you, the world goes on.

Perhaps this is what the show’s pleasingly gnomic title captures – the simple fact of life going on. A disconcerting sense many people experience during grief is the unease of feeling that the whole world has changed but no one else has noticed. Not only do the domestic necessities of eating, cleaning and sleeping need completing, along with funeral admin, so too do the cogs of civilisation outside keep turning.

One of many definitions of civilisation (and the term is rather fraught) describes the institutionalisation of sympathy, in the emergence of rituals of death, burial and grief. To dispose of one’s dead formally could, in some formulations, be considered a sign of civilisation. Another definition might centre the existence of some form of economy. Yet another might highlight the creation of, and engagement with art. At times Civilisation feels like a beautiful, deliberate space for reflection, a suggestion of what we currently lack for all our apparent ‘civilised’ development. The show draws you back; were it to return in a year, I would likely watch it again. It has a powerful quality, almost like a ritual, whose exact symbolism and significance is beyond direct decoding or translation, though its impact is emotionally profound.

Civilisation

Directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart, Choreography by Morgann Runacre-Temple with the company, Design by Charlotte Espiner, Lighting Design by Alex Fernandes, Additional material created by original performers Alethia Antonia, Emily Thompson-Smith, James Olivo, Produced by Antler, Associate Producer Eve Allin
Production Photographs by Alex Brenner
Reviewed 7th September 2022