© Robert Workman 'The Flowerbed' reviews recent Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre reviews more John Mallinson reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

The Flowerbed is an earlier work than his internationally successful Giselle (2003) but has been completely rechoreographed for this production. A simple set has Shakespeare's "two households" as cardboard-cutout type houses behind the neat lawn which they fatally share, part, one imagines, of a suburban housing estate.

The 'Capulets' arrive: mother (played by Vladislav Benito Sóltys in drag), the ineffectual father, a skin-headed 'Tybalt' figure, and 'Juliet' – the characters are unnamed. They break into an empty house to use it as a squat, then settle on the lawn with cans of beer, cigarettes, pills and television. They are slobs and proud of it, though their daughter is discomforted by their behaviour. Next door to what the choreographer portrays as low-lifes live the obsessionally tidy, Venetian blind-twitching bourgeois 'Montagues' and their son (played by Rachel Poirier). The two cross-sex castings served no obvious purpose except that women played by muscular men with 5 o'clock shadow and hairy legs are butts for a laugh.

There was so much aggressive cigarette inhalation in this piece that, in view of what befell the characters, it could have been used as a government health warning. Smoking, once pretty universal, now seems a moral issue and is used here as a clichéd signifier of low character. (The senses were quickened at one point by the fragrant smell of a distinctly 'herbal' cigarette wafting from the stage.)
 

'Mr Montague' is an oddity, more in love with his lawn-mower than his wife, trimming blades of grass with nail scissors and even having an orgasm on his (literally) manicured lawn. He too is a consumer of downers. His wife favours cling-film wrapped calisthenics, usually wears rubber gloves and buys large amounts of disinfectant at the supermarket.

The real turf war between the families arises when the newcomers make a flowerbed which encroaches on part of the others' lawn – the first round of sparring ensues. From there the taunting and aggro gradually increase: Keegan-Dolan is determined to be "in yer face" with the audience and since the spectators are within six feet of the performers that is not difficult. Beer sprays around, garden implements are hurled, the drama can't fail to come across. The lovers meet and have an upside down 'balcony' scene with the boy hanging off the roof above the girl's window; later he performs tricks on his bike to woo her. The course of love doesn't run true, with interventions from parents on both sides, and they end with a suicide pact.

There is a form of narrative dance drama which is intensely choreographed but not very dancerly. Matthew Bourne's Play Without Words is one such, this is another. Throughout there is choreographed and stylised movement in 20 or so set pieces, often clever and pointful, but the only conventional dance sequences are brief and belong to the lovers who share lyrical moments before all hell breaks loose again.

In the end the whole cast ends up as dead and blood be-spattered as in any Jacobean tragedy: death by accidental drug overdose, stabbing with garden shears and a fork, double suicide by poison and finally suicide with a kitchen knife and self-immolation in a burning house.
 

The Flowerbed plays like a nasty reality TV show which horrifies and fascinates in equal measure but which makes little relationship between performers and a distanced and hence voyeuristic audience. Of such things are tragedies not made, especially as no-one is left alive on stage to mourn the dead. (I don't think the audience did, though one couldn't avoid feeling a little sorry for the lovers.)

This is an unsettling drama but, clever and entertaining as it sometimes is, it leaves a bitter taste and an unhappy suspicion that the creator feels a disdain for most of his characters. A reasonable gauge to opinion is whether one wants to see a piece again: on this occasion, no thanks, but I am keen to see what comes next (The Bull and Oedipus Rex are new works promised for the next two years).