The Lowry, Salford
Four years ago, performance artist Marina Abramovi?, born in Belgrade in 1946 and still very much alive, invited the celebrated American director Robert Wilson to co-create a piece about her. The resulting performance can be read as a more general meditation on life and death. Its visually stunning succession of scenes, although almost searing in their clarity, suggest multiple meanings. Take the opening ? three forms lie on three black biers; each pale face, framed by long dark hair, looks like Abramovi?. A thin, sharp neon light separates the edge of the stage from the spectators. Lean dogs sniff around red (velvet-wrapped?) bone shapes scattered around the biers. A continuous hum reverberates. The image evokes a range of associations: a cemetery; a battlefield; Abramovi?'s 1997 performance Balkan Baroque, 1997, when she washed 1,500 fresh cow bones. Its composition also suggests an Orthodox Christian icon ? the objects isolated in light instead of gold leaf; the biers echoing the black shapes on the icons of the Nativity and the Resurrection. Religious resonances become more explicit later with the appearance of hovering angels, and also in the lyric (written by Antony Hegarty, whose singing is one of the glories of the piece): "Why must you suffer/ Like Christ for his Father?" ? a too-explicit comparison that momentarily tips the piece towards hagiography.
Throughout, the collaboration of music, light, sound, text and design is exceptional. All of the performers combine high levels of technical expertise with extraordinary emotional intensity. Willem Dafoe's crazed expressionist-style puppet-man is sheer energy; Svetlana Spaji? and her group of Belgrade singers are haunting; Hegarty is supernatural and Abramovi? herself protean. At its least good moments, this production is simply beautiful; but, at its best, it offers something more than the sum of its excellent parts.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jul/17/life-and-death-marina-abramovic
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