Roadmetal, Sweetbread creates a visual maze between stage and screen that confuses and amuses. Station House Opera’s internationally acclaimed performance brings theatrical foolery to the Nottingham Arts Theatre as part of the NOW Festival. From the first visual loop-the-loop that draws a character from a film seen on screen onto the stage in the flesh, I know we have entered a peculiar world. This heightened sense of reality is all the weirder for the sight of familiar Nottingham streets in the first moments of the performance. Throughout, the performance messes with the familiar theatre space and with the use of camera trickery, draws us into the unknown backstage world of the theatre. | "At some points, the contrast between the actions on stage and screen creates a feeling of fantasy being acted out. " | | Camilla Zajac |
Using a minimalist set and a screen suspended at the back of the stage, the performance mixes live and filmed performance. By intercutting these, a strange world of contrasts, near misses and déjà vu is created. Within all this, a sense of the relationship between the man and woman begins to develop. Gradually the sadomasochistic twists and turns to this relationship begin to grow, swerving from love play to violence. At some points, the contrast between the actions on stage and screen creates a feeling of fantasy being acted out. On stage, they drink tea together whilst on screen, the woman ominously approaches her partner with a hammer. This then reverses like a dance, with the two sets of characters becoming mirror images of each other. At other points, it seems as though the action on screen is a warning for the character on stage, as he rushes off to avoid being squeezed into a cardboard box or hit over the head with a hammer. Weird and wonderfulThe effect is then reversed with the character reacting on screen to something that is yet to happen on stage, creating a weird and wonderful other place between the two media. Whilst it looks effortless, this illusion of theatrics, timing and technical planning must have been mathematically worked out. Within the performance there are smaller moments, which work well on their own as visual puns. These remind me of classic slapstick comedy or Rene Magritte’s painterly games with reality. One surrealistically playful section with a door was genuinely joyful to watch. There are a couple of points where the momentum is slightly lost, but as a whole, the performance keeps up the dizzying interplay between characters, co-dependent on their mirror/screen images. Roadmetal, Sweetbread is a very physical work, with much smashing, smooching and rushing around. Combined with the movement between the characters and Through the Looking Glass-style reversals from stage to screen, this energy creates a weird sense of pantomime. There is a great feeling of freedom to this wordless performance. By subverting the rules of space, time and narrative, Roadmetal, Sweetbread transforms the known space of the Nottingham Arts Theatre into something entirely unfamiliar. | 
