Effortless and unforced … Kathryn Hunter and Jared McNeill in The Valley of Astonishment. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
Nervous theatre-makers strain each and every nerve to get our focus. But the striking factor about this 75-minute piece, written and directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne, is its maturity, calm and aesthetic grace. It is as if its creators assume that we’re fascinated by the topic, the operating of the human brain, so they never need to have to shout and scream. The show grew out of an earlier piece, Je Suis un Phénomène, which dealt with memory. In this case, the emphasis is mostly on synaesthesia, in which a single sense is stimulated by one more. We comply with the fortunes of a fictive female, Sammy Costas, whose ability to see phrases as photos provides her a phenomenal memory. Fired as a journalist and investigated by cognitive scientists, she turns into a music-hall performer who is in the long run traumatised by her uncommon present. Her story is interwoven with that of a 28-12 months-old guy who relates music to colours and with a review of a senior citizen whose impaired proprioception, or inability to sense his physique, indicates he has to use his brain to overcome muscular paralysis.
What, some will request, does this have to do with theatre? In the hands of Brook and Estienne, almost everything. They engross us in the human predicament of Sammy, whose mnemomic electrical power is each blessing and curse. We see precisely how she is able to memorise the opening of Dante’s Inferno while understanding how, when it comes to numbers, she’s tormented by her inability to overlook. But the demonstrate, in its range of tone, also reminds a single of Brook’s well-known categorisation, in The Empty Area, of “holy” and “rough” theatre. Here holy theatre is exemplified by passages from The Conference of the Birds that give the display its title. But when Marcello Magni, as a a single-handed magician, persuades audience members to participate in card tricks, we are into the planet of popular theatre.
The present is staged with minimalist beauty nothing at all appears on the pristine white platform that is not employed. The acting is similarly unforced: Kathryn Hunter, as Sammy, suggests an ordinary lady bewildered by her extraordinary energy Magni effortlessly switches from white-coated scientist to genial card trickster and Jared McNeill conveys the relief of a man whose comprehending of synaesthesia enhances his adore of jazz. The two musicians, Raphael Chambouvet and Toshi Tsuchitori, are also integral to underscoring the show’s quiet astonishment at the miracles of the human brain.
• Until finally twelve July. Box workplace: 020-7922 2922. Venue: Youthful Vic, London.
The Valley of Astonishment evaluation a sensory meditation on the human brain
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