Station House Opera

Review of Roadmetal, Sweetbread by Station House Opera at Nottingham Arts Theatre on 24 October 2006.

Roadmetal, Sweetbread occupies overlapping realities that collide in a hinterland between past and present, onstage and offstage. That the two protagonists enter and exit the stage and the screen, repeatedly questioning our notion of live-ness – until one spots an erratic tic or an out of position table – is testament to Station House Opera’s craft. They make a habit out of creating worlds that sit as uncomfortably as the viewer between media, genre, time and space.

The piece is tied to the theatre – we see a man on film arrive by tram and walk, whistling, towards the venue. As he enters the auditorium, the door slams behind us and we turn our heads to watch him wander down the aisle. The play between filmed and performed bubbles over as a woman struggles to fit a lightbulb and it falls to the floor. On screen the bulb is fitted and we sit in silence contemplating her failure to live up to her video self. Then the man walks onstage with a broom and sweeps up the broken glass as if to say ‘This was meant.’

This is a study of absence. As scenes are re-enacted with performers missing or misplaced. An exploration of domestic violence. As violent undertones are presented as an onscreen counterpoint to the onstage action. A digital love triangle. As a third character enters the fray to create an extra tension between the two existing characters fighting or performing for our attention and their survival. Whether they are slave to themselves, each other, the technology or the audience is up for debate and perhaps the question the piece is posing. But as the last onstage image renders itself – a meticulous recreation of the detritus of a murder scene on screen, we see the live finally bleed into the recorded.