Reviewed on Tuesday January 19 (photo by Jamie Williams)
Jenny Hval’s show in the famous Sydney Festival Spiegeltent wasn’t a performance: it was a transformation, and not only of Hval herself. At some point during the evening, those watching stopped being audience members and became witnesses. They were affected – essentially, unavoidably affected – and the stunned expression on their faces as they wandered out reflected that change.
It’s hard to say at what exact time this alteration occurred. Perhaps it was the 16th or so time Hval uttered the phrase “soft cock rock” in her clipped accent, backed by a series of smudged electro beats provided by a wig-wearing man behind a mixing desk. Or maybe it was the moment that Hval’s backing dancer cum hygiene assistant cum personal carer – a young woman clad in a full-length hazmat suit with red paint smeared around the crotch – began draping the singer in toilet paper.
Or perhaps it was the moment Hval played her own voice through her iPhone, holding the microphone stiff against the device, her expression bored and muted while her recorded tones swirled emotionally. Then again, it could have been the very second she started to pulsate across a yoga ball, eyeing up the audience with a dark mix of desire and abject hatred while her choreographed comrade sobbed and roughly applied mascara in the background.
All that said, it may well have been when the singer began slicing up her wig, tearing into it with a pair of scissors; the dancer slapping her breasts in the background as they sung a song of death, about death, full of death.
This wasn’t really a gig. Nor was it an art piece. Nor was it a poetry reading. It was some horrific hybrid; a mutated, deliberately messy beast that actively rejected critical reading. Was it any good? It’s nigh on impossible to say. It was awkward, and halting, and at times it was outright dull. But it was meant to be.
There were walk-outs. Of course there were walk-outs. On some level the show would have been a failure if there hadn’t have been. But even those who walked out were affected. Even those who walked out were changed. At some point, the Spiegeltent stopped being a performance space and became a cocoon; a wet, trembling vehicle for change. Although at what point that was, who knows?
