Clothes can make a man but they can also undo him, and so it proves for the lowly clerk in Gogol's short story who acquires a wonderful overcoat only find it doesn't bring him the happiness he expected.
It's a story that seems to have particular appeal to the physical theatre crowd, and over the years I've seen it done by one American, duos of eastern Europeans and entire international ensembles. No version, however, has been quite as sumptuous as this Canadian effort, which in terms of production values is pure mink.
Played to a seamlessly edited score by Dmitri Shostakovich, the production unravels the story as a sepia-toned silent movie played out by a vast cast who create a world teetering on the brink of delirious madness. They do it with movement so stylised it is as if the whole thing has been choreographed rather than merely directed. These people could teach the spinning top a thing or two.
For the first 30 minutes you sit there open-mouthed at the sheer technical skill and panache of the thing, and for the second half an hour you keep thinking: "Yes, I know you can do lots of very, very stylised movement very, very cleverly, but please do something else now." By the 90-minute mark I just wanted to lie down very quietly in a darkened room. Even the curtain call is hyperactive.
All this would not matter if the piece told the story really well. But it doesn't even do that coherently, and the show is so busy showing off its physical tricks and tics that it manoeuvres itself into a straitjacket of its own making, albeit a very stylish mink straitjacket. Halfway through I realised that what it most reminded me of was Olympic figure skating, technically impressive and completely cold and inert.
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