Strange Days

How seriously should the opinions of a director about their work be taken? Barthes' declaration of the death of the author (effectively denuding an art work of context and personality beyond the text) is balanced by more traditional attempt to uncover the "real meaning" as intended by the creator (most passionately defended by the ever tactful Camille Paglia). For The Good, The God and The Guillotine, director Peter S Petralia insists that Camus' novel The Stranger is not pessimistic about the godlessness of the universe, but is a celebration of humanity's potential for free action.

Consequently, if Petralia's production is judged by his intentions, it is a complete failure. From the scene of angst caused by the loss of a mobile phone - wittily performed in a mixture of folk music theatricality and stadium rock lighting - to the fatalism of the finale, softly leaving the audience with a sense of death's inevitability, The Good, The God and The Guillotine exposes the horror at the core of life without God. The description of a walk to a church on a hot day - too slow invites sunburn, too fast can end in a chill - captures the impossibility of finding the happy medium in a hostile universe. Camus' text, here interpreted through electronic music and sophisticated scenography, is rarely optimistic. If Petralia fails in his intention, it is perhaps because The Stranger won't let him misread its meaning.

Ignoring Petralia's claims, however, leads to a far more successful production. This being a work-in-progress (around half of the projected scenes were shown at Tramway), there are signs that G3 grapples with the core anguish at the heart of Camus' novel. The cunning use of projections - blood revealing ink - over the scene that first involves The Stranger in the events that lead to his doom evoke the sinister tension of Camus' prose and the various mismatches of style (folk versus stadium rock, electronic beats against an cod-operatic recitative) evoke the alienation that Camus portrays in his characterisation. 

The Stranger is a perfect representation of his existential thought could inspire stunning art - yet it is fascinating that this anti-hero, a man who commits a racially aggravated murder, could be read as a hero. He does make a strong stand for atheism, bold and coherent, before anticipating his subsequent execution with relish. Unfortunately, he does this by beating up an annoying priest and casting death as "freedom" from the pain of living. 

Proto-Type Theater do manage to conjure a theatrical environment that speaks of alienation - a screen separates the audience from the stage, the musicians and actors generally keep to their own parts of the stage and their sporadic interactions are all the more dramatic for being rare. At its best G3 expresses the benign heartlessness of the universe, most poignantly in the observation of the sun's unwavering presence or the jolly singalong splattered in projected blood.