The Peculiar Case of Clara Parsons at Galatos

Reviewed by BERNADETTE RAE

Peculiar Clara Parsons is caught up in a classic love triangle at Galatos this week.

The plot may seem on the prosaic side of passion, in its bare bones: Victoria Parsons returns from a sojourn at opera school in London, unaware that boyfriend and prospective bridegroom Greg has been having it off with her sister.

"But the drama," says producer Veronica Barton, "the love, the betrayal, and the madness is worthy of a Greek tragedy. Shakespeare would have had them all dead by the end."

But Shakespeare would never have told the tale in the manner of this Christchurch-based troupe of theatre practitioners and multimedia technicians, known as "the clinic", who rarely fit comfortably in conventional theatre spaces and who use three video projectors, wrap-around screens and 12 speakers to illuminate the performances of three actors in The Peculiar Case of Clara Parsons.

Nor are those technologies used merely as background and aural wallpaper to the physical theatre.

In a complexly choreographed exposition of technical know-how and old-fashioned stagecraft, performers Anastasia Dailianis (Victoria), Lucette Hindin (Clara) and Gareth Reeves (Greg) interact directly with projected images and soundscapes.

Victoria spends lots of time talking to herself in the mirror - except the mirror image is a filmed version. Greg manipulates a hand-held video camera much like a visual Dictaphone - recording his thoughts that are simultaneously projected on the walls beside and behind the audience.

And technology mines the recesses of poor Clara's increasingly haunted mind to discover a malevolent clown called Crouch, performed by Rhys Latton, present for others only via video.

The Peculiar Case of Clara Parsons has been three years in the making, and stunned audiences at the Wellington Fringe Festival in 2002 and the Christchurch Arts Festival last year.

Critics declared it "mesmerising ... a quixotic, eccentric, inventive, strangely fascinating excursion through madness, loss and love" ... and as having "spectacularly well-realised concepts and a unique company style".

And the show has developed a lot since then, according to Barton.

She explains the unique nature of the clinic, off-stage as well as on. It consists of a core of five theatre practitioners: Haydn Kerr, Julieanne Eason, Hindin, Dailianis and Barton, who work with no set hierarchy. They are not all involved in every project - other people are brought in for specific works.

It is a system that keeps them happy to be working together after five years, says Barton, who is acting as producer for The Peculiar Case of Clara Parsons.

The clinic is committed to combining new technology and non-theatre arts with their performances and to remaining in Christchurch, where the isolation, she says, "keeps us fresh".

Galatos, Galatos St

August 5-14