The theatre is little more than a tin shed; wooden boards and weighty doors judder open for us into the dark hush. Violent Delights is about to enjoy it’s premiere night at the Sydney Fringe Festival.
The players wear simple tunics, loose cotton pants and no makeup. There are no props, no background scenery. Just their bodies. They’re dotted around the stage and watch us, statuesque and intimidating, as we seat ourselves. Heads bowed and hands clasped, each of them is cradling a small white light that casts an eerie glow beneath their chins.
We settle; a player begins to speak. Then another joins – and on, until a chaotic chorus rabbles forth. Some voices shout, pained and straining and others whisper – a little crushed and afraid. Yet another despairs, yet another is angry.
This chaos is a little concentrated syrup on the tongue of what comes after; two hours of French style bouffon play twisting us into challenges, unexpected laughter and propelling us akimbo into emotional briars. Through some of Shakespeare’s most famous works, and unsettling renditions of old songs, we confront and grapple with the psyches that populate the nexus of passion, violence, humour and play.
Violent Delights picks the viewer up and carries them headlong through the tenebrous depths of the Bard’s fixation with the worst of human behaviour. From the harrowing rape of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus to the tragic ferocity of Romeo and Juliet‘s closing suicides, we are privy to an intense and curious delivery that never drops a beat.
Levity has a place, and some fluttering gentleness of love appears. This serves to offset the colour of the main shade, and allows us to breathe. Even then, viciousness is not far in the distance, and the mood changes with little warning. Kate and Petruchio from The Taming of The Shrew play up their connection with bawdy deliciousness but in mere moments he has transitioned to a man standing over her, practically growling his marital intentions. She cowers, eyes aflame in affront and fear.
The piece abounds with sexual energy and wit and also neatly holds up to the light Shakespeare’s obsession with female sexuality and purity. Hero’s slut-shaming at the altar is played out in full. The death of Desdemona, which will always be one of the most heartbreaking things I’ll ever see on stage, is played plainly here with an unstinting brutality and relatable desperation. I was impressed that they allowed her character to embody the violence of resistance, such that one can’t but admire her as she fights him with fists and legs and voice until the rattle of her last breath.
Violent Delights is perhaps not as funny as it purports itself to be; indeed, I did not find the majority of the subject matter provoked laughter or entertainment. Instead, I found the piece to be one of great gravitas, and a reminder that the tracks we tread around coercion, passion and that tricky thing we like to palm off as “human nature” are complex ones.
Or perhaps not nearly as complicated as we’d like them to be. Though it doesn’t intend it, Violent Delights is a mixed and provoking morality play that prods at sore places and opens boxes we should look inside more often.
