Somnium

What is Somnium? That woozy gap between wake and sleep is the setting for Brú Theatre’s absorbing, beautiful, disturbing, totally enveloping new show, which premiered at Galway International Arts Festival. Like the state of somnium – or dreaming – itself, this show exists in borderlands, of awake sleep, but also in how it’s created, skirting theatre, light and projections, music, dance and movement, voice spoken and sung, to create a stunning, ritualistic, immersive, multisensory experience. Bru’s shows, from the emigration mood piece Ar Ais Arís to last year’s Not a Word, about an Irish navvy, are skilful and striking, drawing on technology and human artistry but taking quite distinct approaches.
This starts with Philomela, a lesser-known figure from Greek mythology. Her sister Procne’s husband, Tereus, raped her, then cut out her tongue to stop her telling others, but she ultimately has her revenge, via a nightingale and Furies. It is “a tale as old as time and for some sleep does not come,” Philippa Hambly’s voiceover tells us. Sexual violence and the use of power to suppress are horribly timeless, but somehow here the treatment of this dark story transcends pain, and the dream experience becomes a renewal.

Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Somnium, by Brú Theatre. Photograph: Pato Cassinoni

Galway International Arts Festival 2024: Somnium, by Brú Theatre. Photograph: Pato Cassinoni
Hambly is onstage, too, two layers of gauze curtain creating a dreamlike setting and screens for the fluttering, shifting images; the composer and musician Julianna Bloodgood sings from the darkness, then into the light, and she conducts layered sounds, using her live voice and her recorded voice in harmonies, and singing bowl, harmonium and Mediterranean frame drum to create an original score: ethereal, sorrowful, mythic, eastern. The languages – Ukrainian, Croatian, ancient Greek, Bloodgood’s own created language (as well as Irish and English) – are mostly unfamiliar, so their sounds become instruments too.
Jane Cassidy’s layered, evocative audiovisual design is intrinsic to this gorgeous, unsettling performance, along with Sarah Jane Shiels’s lighting and Andrew Clancy’s set. As well as creating a three-dimensional world for the mythic action on stage, the images and effects literally leave the stage and envelop the audience, so we’re wrapped into Philomela’s story and wake-sleep state. Layers of projections of leaves dance and we are in the forest; Philomela seeks her sister to tell her but walls of moving creatures block her path; clouds burst from the horizon and carry us away.

Directed by Brú’s James Riordan with the company, the experience is absorbing, ravishingly beautiful, engaging and a brilliant evocation of dream state.

Continues at Bank of Ireland Theatre, as part of Galway International Arts Festival, until Saturday, July 20th.

Thu Jul 18 2024

Ethereal sound and imagery transform an ancient story of rape and mutilation in Brú Theatre’s new production. Combining ancient ritual and modern technology, director James Riordan, two performers and the designers create an enveloping experience, with precisely calibrated audiovisual effects.
The story of Philomela (Philippa Hambly) who was raped by her sister Procne’s husband, King Tereus, is presented in snatches, drawing on different versions. Based on the Greek myth of Philomela and Procne, it is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and also pops up in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. It helps to know that Philomela is later transformed into a nightingale, since the bird is a recurring image here.
Layers of gauze curtains become screens for artist Jane Cassidy’s projected images of leaves, clouds and water, while lights swirl and voices emerge from the gloaming. Composed, performed and sung by Julianna Bloodgood, the score is a rich blend of harmonium, percussion, live and recorded vocals, eclectically mixing languages and world musical traditions. When Tereus cuts out Philomela’s tongue to prevent her from revealing what he has done, Bloodgood’s song becomes a low, thrumming lament: a guttural cry that also has controlled resonance. Bloodgood is such a compelling presence and superb singer that at times she eclipses the staged sequences.
Delicately lit by Sarah Jane Shiels, projections of swirling fog and surf fill the stage and auditorium, as Philomela, submitting to waves of grief, dives beneath, to emerge in a bird mask. It is exquisite, yet seems too delicate a treatment of this violent myth. Strangely, it omits Philomela’s resistance: refusing to be silenced, she embroidered a tapestry for Procne depicting the rape, and the sisters went on to exact horrifically gory revenge on Tereus, an act that inspired Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. For all the artistry of this production, its dreamy solemnity is lacking some grit.

Sun 21 Jul 2024 

Haunting that liminal space suggested by the show’s title Somnium. The world between waking and sleep. As Bloodgood sits by her instruments, unfurling shadows behind sheets of gauze reveal a woman sat onstage. The vocal ritual given physical and narrative accompaniment by Philippa Hambly, with both performances soon enriched by Jane Cassidy’s stunning parade of impressive visuals. Brú Theatre’s fifty-five minute ritual aspiring towards transformation and occasionally getting there. Even as its retelling of a tale as old as time can feel twice as long at times. Its story aspiring to myth reduced to a fairytale.

The tale in question being the Greek legend of sisters Philomela and Procne. About how Procne’s husband, Tereus, rapes Philomela then cuts out her tongue to prevent her telling. About Philomela’s subsequent revenge by way of a nightingale and The Furies. Less reimagined so much as repackaged as strands of mist from the Celtic twilight. Its power diminished, its savagery sanitised by the civilised manner of its telling. Somnium unsure if it’s a concert with theatrical accompaniment or a theatrical performance with musical accompaniment. Competing forms of music, body and visual design striving towards interdisciplinary coherence yet rarely fusing into that transcendent other. The result, too often, suggestive of stylised, Riverdance broodiness with none of the joy.

Myth and mysticism more John Boorman’s Excalibur than Black Elk Speaks. Bloodgood’s hybrid of languages and sounds a spiritual Esperanto. Its text less the mythic poetry of a Joy Harjo so much as knock off Romanticism with cliched pastorals. Songs and scenes alternating as trippy visuals become more and more ambitious. Layered flames giving way to encompassing forests and breathtaking snowstorms as the story unfolds. From an ever shifting crowd to a nightingale in a sea of clouds that encompasses the entire room. Even as true depth is often achieved when visual flamboyance is reduced to the soft, orange glow of twilight gloom, or the haunting blue of moonlit shadow. All the while Bloodgood’s keening strives for moments of release. The final, stunning image, perfectly scored, achieving that sought after merging of sound, body and imagery. The end of a stumbling journey finally reached, the view making it one well worth the taking.

Despite talk of interdisciplinary collaboration, Somnium shows a clear, hierarchal order. A pyramid of power with Bloodgood firmly at its apex. Director and co-creator, James Riordan, theatre maker Hambly, and visual artist Cassidy acolytes in service to Bloodgood’s high priestess. Who, like all priests and priestesses, blocks access to the temple even as they reveal it. The audience obedient spectators rather than engaged participants hypnotised by the ritual’s sounds, shadows and lights. Attentive to Bloodgood’s musical finger pointing at the moon on a moonless night. Which is not always a bad thing by any measure. Bloodgood’s voice can weave such spells its balm for the soul.

Yet in borrowing from all traditions, Somnium belongs to none, even as it strives to root itself in the mythic past via pick and mix language and mysticism. Gregorian Latin replaced by a pagan chant, yet still only accessible to the initiated. The Catholic priest now a pagan priestess steeped in stillness. Singing the same song with different lyrics. Achieving roughly the same result. Even so, Bloodgood can wield such genuine power it’s impressive to behold on occassion.

As artistic experiments go, Somnium is often hugely successful. Even though it preaches to the converted, there’s more soul in this single production than many other companies can muster in a year. Brú Theatre reaffirming their reputation as one of the bravest, innovative, risk taking companies in the country. If Somnium can feel like the opening ceremony for the Olympics at times, there are moments it captures a million lifetimes, offering brief, fleeting glimpses of the timeless within time, of the silence behind the silence.

Somnium by Brú Theatre, directed by James Riordan with the company, composer Julianna Bloodgood, runs at Bank of Ireland Theatre, University of Galway, as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2024 till July 20.

Jul 19, 2024