Robert Lepage has a reputation as one of theatre’s wizards. Here he turns his ambitions to 360-degree spectacle. Spades is the first of a quartet of card-themed pieces, seemingly intended to redefine our notion of theatre in the round. It riffs on ideas of chance, gambling, conflict and the cyclical nature of experience — often laying on the symbolism too thick.
Technically, Spades is pretty special. Set in Las Vegas, it cuts between locations as different as the desert and a casino. Six actors portray a wide range of characters — among them an Elvis impersonator, soldiers, hotel maids and a Danish warrior. They emerge from compartments beneath the circular stage, while props are lowered elegantly.
The strongest section revolves around a British TV producer with an addictive personality. He wrestles with a doomed relationship and his longstanding desire to gamble. Meanwhile, another character, a physicist who specialises in string theory (a subject dealt with cursorily), sums up what’s not so strong. He goes with his wife to a Celine Dion concert and reports that, though musically banal, it is a triumph of data management and deft choreography. We’re supposed, I think, to laugh at the dryness of his response — the critic showing his lack of imagination — yet his words serve as an apt assessment of Spades.
At two and a half hours, without an interval, this is slow-moving sorcery. It’s mysterious, at times hauntingly intimate but elsewhere underpowered, with intellectual pretensions where it needs muscle.
Until March 2 (0844 482 8008, roundhouse.org.uk)
