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I’ve always felt sorry for Lot’s wife. Not only is she dismissed as a woman with no name but her extraordinary punishment is stated so peremptorily! And all she did was look back in angst! Why?

‘The return of Lot’s wife’ seeks an answer to the same question, with the disobedient spouse transported from Old Testament Sodom to 1950s Brooklyn and the chance to confront God about her fate. The production was conceived around the time of the 9/11 catastrophe, which gives an added dimension to the twin themes of looking back and love/punishment.

‘The return of Lot’s wife’ mixes narrative theatre and contemporary dance. An opening duologue sees Sara Pearson (as Lot’s wife) and Patrik Widrig set the scene by explaining the story of the families of Abraham and Lot and how Abraham persuades God to save Lot ( “if there were 50 good men in Sodom…...45…30..20 etc.. well, what if there was only one?”).

The scene is set in more ways than one, since whilst explaining the Old Testament, the two dancers are also constructing the set! There is a lot of very efficient set construction by the dancers during the performance, not to mention the sweeping away of the mass of liberally dispensed salt – believe it or not, these Dance Umbrella performances are sponsored by Saxo!

Lot’s wife opens with a monologue, legs crossed, from her kitchen table whilst she douses her hamburger with salt. The audience watched in horror to see if she would actually take a bite – she didn’t! Later we see her in other aspects of domesticity: ironing and on the telephone in a seriously cool retro lounge complete with great yellow/green striped curtains and orange carpet.

Sara Pearson is both funny and sad in her quest for answers as Lot’s Wife. Why was she turned into a pillar of salt? Why did she turn back? Why doesn’t she have a name? Her acting is excellent. One US critic described the performance as ‘one part Woody Allen narrative, one part prayer’ and Sara would be perfect in a Woody Allen film – she has that pushy but gentle humourous quality.

There are problems. After a fascinating start, the production stalled very obviously in a sequence where Patrik Widrig carries out a rambling monologue whilst sweeping up the first batch of salt left over from the hamburger. At one point, it felt as if he had forgotten the next line. The performance had trouble in recovering from this apparent lack of obvious focus and relevance and the whole middle section of the 73 minute production worked much less well than at either end.
 

Sara Pearson-Patrik Widrig's The Return of Lot's Wife
© Jack Vartoogian

For a company known for its improvisation skills, there were some interesting passages of detailed choreography where co-ordination of movement between the three or four dancers was crucial. I particularly liked the two sequences where the four dancers (Pearson, Widrig, Lindsay Gilmour and Alexandra Holmes) took up four corners of a square or rectangular shape and moved in perfect sequence, partly in opposite movements between the diagonally opposed corners and then in an almost clockwork use of the space.

The production was premiered in New York last January but one of the original cast, Katharine Fisher, has since moved on to Momix and her replacement, Alex Holmes, only joined the company three weeks ago. She fitted in perfectly and both Alex and Lindsay Gilmour are outstanding dancers.

Carter Burwell's oringinal score – he is also responsible for the music in the Coen Brothers films, such as ‘Fargo’ and ‘Miller’s Crossing’ - is punctuated several times by the recital of Sufi poetry written by the 14th Century Persian poet, Hafiz.

We are told that this lends a different perspective to the themes of obedience and disobedience. I understand that Sufi is a way to God through love and truth, which fits well with the work’s over-riding themes of seeking truth and love not punishment. But since very few people will understand Farsi and there is no attempt at explanation or translation, the significance (over and above the simple tonal quality of Kouross Esmaeli's reading) is at best blurred and, at worst, completely obtuse!

The Company does achieve a very strong level of intimacy with the audience and the performances were engaging (especially from the very charismatic Pearson) and yet, as a whole experience, it was unconvincing and over-long.

The narrative was well written, funny and poignant but both it and the choreography stopped short of giving either the audience or Lot’s Wife any meaningful answers.

In the final monologue, Lot’s Wife despairingly talks of being ‘helpless and hopeless’. In terms of grasping what all of this meant, I felt much the same way!