Contains Violence at Lyric Hammersmith

Contains Violence at Lyric Hammersmith

21 July, 2008
by: Joe Harrod

Grabbing a cup of coffee to boost warmth and throwing on a couple more layers, we take our seats on the outdoor terrace at the Lyric Hammersmith for an evening of voyeurism and violence. Every member of the audience is equipped with a pair of binoculars and some headphones and pre-show chatter is replaced by excited activity as we tune into the sarcastic test signal and tension builds.

Contains Violence is one of the best ideas of the decade, theatrically speaking, co-produced by the Lyric and Shunt, two companies with great, experimental reputations. The concept behind David Rosenberg's piece is a murder mystery viewed from afar – a voyeuristic, plugged-in Rear Window for the 21st Century. Fusing location-specific theatre with violence, murder and interactive 'perversion lite' is a fantastic idea.

When Rosenberg and David Farr at the Lyric hit upon the concept, they must have been ten times as excited – but they have let themselves down pretty badly. Staging a sexed up, entirely novel 'peeping tom play', a wonderfully new and visceral experience for an audience, the team behind this play should have kept an eye on coherence and empathy. Simply put, Contains Violence is a dynamite idea with slightly slip-shod execution.

This is real shame because we'll probably have to wait a while for another show like it, and it is a wonderful thrill. During the piece, at least half of the pleasure comes from training binoculars away from the action on commuters queuing at traffic lights or drunken punters smoking outside the pub. The sleazy undertones are heightened for your reviewer by being seated next to a heavy breathing gentleman so corpulent that the very scaffolding creaks under his weight.

The play is incomprehensible and features a cast of unlikeable office workers whose entrapment and doom has no discernible motive or reason. There are very clever moments and highlights, mostly involving the cross-dressing narrator who suddenly pops into the action, and whose withering asides enhance the build up. There is also brilliant use of swearing. Low points include the excessively engineered soundtrack complete with door handles and pencil sharpeners, and a comic character and witness who is (even from the other side of the street) nothing more than an irritatingly caricatured jug-eared prat.

Not only is it difficult and kind of beside the point to follow what's going on. A more serious flaw is the total lack of realism. While the narration is splendidly sinister, nothing said by characters is even remotely convincing and there is absolutely no reason for anything that happens. Not only that, but one of the murders is extremely poorly staged. You'd have to be a pretty wet specimen to let someone kill you with a staple gun and a couple of pats to the lower back with a computer keyboard.

So Contains Violence is not good. But it is a lot of fun, and not exorbitantly priced. I’d recommend anyone with voyeuristic tendencies to have a look, and that's probably just about anyone. It is just a shame that the piece doesn't deliver any real tension, empathy, or emotion beyond the occasional moment of hilarity.

Of course the production is necessarily constrained in many ways. It's cold outside in night-time London and effectively they have to get through the piece inside ninety minutes. There's hardly time to develop any sympathies with characters or tension about their outcomes – but they don't even try. Specifically, apart from the jug-eared prat, nobody speaks except for the odd tortured moan or sweary outburst.

People said Hitchcock was mad when he staged a murder mystery viewed from a wheelchair in a single room, but it worked. Dramatic novelties and constraints are often a creative catalyst, but should never obscure basics like character and plotting. These guys could and should have done better.

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Joe Harrod