Not Only Opera

Balance of camp: The Mother at QEH

The Mother
Bird & Carrot
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Stalls C15, donation from other audience member
22 June 2019
Southbank page

I was glad to see The Mother, although there isn’t much that’s revelatory about it. Arthur Pita is here again, doing his gothic thing, with a little less aplomb than he has done in some things, but rather more than in others; Natalia Osipova and Jonathan Goddard are again his muses, though brought together for what I think may be the first time; Frank Moon creates the soundscape, folk- and metal-influenced as usual but now finally on stage with the performers, where he belongs. I have criticisms, and I’m not sure I’d rush to see it again, but either as an intro to Pita or as a piece for the completists there is something pleasing about The Mother, not least of which is in seeing Osipova and Goddard in the relative intimacy of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The unifying source of my criticisms is, I think, around the level of camp Pita mixes in. Camp is essential to his palette and can take him to the sublime, as in Stepmother/Stepfather, or to the vile. There is a lot of camp in The Mother but, just as in the source story by Hans Christian Andersen, there is intention towards the sober and serious: these are the real fears of motherhood. It’s a high-stakes game: get the balance wrong and you risk either silly-fying or becoming pompous. While neither of those take hold, they hang dangerously in the air.

Here’s an example. Both Goddard and Osipova must each go through several extreme costume changes, he to manifest the trials faced by the mother, she their effect. Such changes are often preceded by a long solo from the other dancer, always elegant but not always pertinent. The costumes (designed by another Pita regular, Yann Seabra) are undeniably cool, and if they were less involved would be less cool. Pragmatically Pita needs to allow time for the costume to be donned, and what better way to do it than with a solo dance by the other dancer. Only it doesn’t feel very serious to prioritise cool costumes above narrative integrity.

Here’s another example and be warned, it includes SPOILERZ (to the end of this paragraph). The Andersen story is, as usual, pretty downbeat, and elsewhere Pita has wonderfully grotesqued this macabre. The Mother, however, is more serious than grotesquerie allows. That puts Pita and his dramaturg Anna Rulevskaya in a pickle, because if they go with the real seriousness that means finding a serious way to discuss infant mortality, a challenge they shy away from. That leaves no option but at the end to reveal the piece as a dream of a modern mother-to-be, an ending that is essentially lame.

A final example. For me the finest moment of the piece was a duet with Goddard cast as a soldier, who melts away within Osipova’s hold as though he had never been. As well as being beautifully danced (like everything), it is highly ambiguous and incredibly poignant – and very clearly removed from the Andersen universe that otherwise dominates. Its position at the heart of the piece makes me think Pita must know this, but, isolated as it is, it can’t help but cast the rest of the work as some costumed chicanery, and the need to follow the Andersen story as a burden rather than a springboard.

You might argue these are finagling criticisms indeed. On the face of it here is an entertaining hour of dance, with two extraordinary and very different dancers – Goddard on home territory, Osipova still making herself comfortable in the style by as passionate and as unencumbered as ever. Moon and fellow musician Dave Price form astonishing one-man bands on either side of the stage, finally liberated from the pit so that the physicality of their performance makes an impressive and wholly welcome link between dance narrative and soundscape. Designs by Seabra are fluid, if a little reminiscent of Coraline and, oh, a million other things. What more could you want? I do want more, because I know Pita can give it.