There We Will Be Buried at ICA

There We Will Be Buried at ICA

22 June, 2012
by: Ricky PS

A bad LSD trip or an unnecessary lesson in representation? Either way, go see it. 

Art critique is different to theatre criticism. You might think that’s both obvious and irrelevant, but it tries to get at the heart of both the subject of There We Will Be Buried, and the problems with it. Fine art writing largely avoids judging quality, because writers aren’t objective and artists don’t have measurable “skills”. Theatre criticism is more open about being consumer advice, but rarely admits to being subjective.

One of the things you can judge, or not, is story, and the unimportance of this play’s biblical narrative is itself very important. Two sisters with almost no memory seek out their lost infant. They seek assistance from a bored child god and, later, a moderately bonkers family celebrating Shabbat. Finally, they find something. No one’s sure what.

I’ll avoid (explicit) judgement. At first, this story focuses on telling us that stories and actors cannot “represent” something else, and we know this because everything is represented wrongly. Rather than speak dialogue, they roughly lip synch to a contorted soundtrack; and as they move around the stage, a TV monitor broadcasts a silent, and slightly different set of movements. Both sets of actions are a metaphor away from their “meaning”, so when one of the sisters, played by writer Yair Oelbaum, argues with a talking harp, she does so by manipulating an ironing board, a metal frame and some spittle-covered sweets into aggressive contortions. Gradually, however, the play bears down on more substantial themes: characters cannot remember things because memory costs money, the father at the Friday night meal gives a terrifying sermon, and which sister is the mother of the lost child keeps changing. Indeed, how she became a mother changes too.

If I do my job, and deliver a judgement on the story, I can say that I was put off by the first half, which teaches us a lesson about representation that should be the basis of all contemporary performance, and not its subject. As a result, I struggled to sympathise with what followed, despite its weightier potential. I’m afraid I wasn’t alone. In the interval, a stranger walked up to me, entirely unprovoked, and told me she thought it was a bad LSD trip. I assume she wasn’t being “literal”, but like a hallucination, There We Will Be Buried was at the same time achingly dull and utterly compelling. So go see it. It’s better than acid.


Part of LIFT, There We Will Be Buried runs at ICA until 24th June. 


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Ricky PS