Revisor (from Vancouver production company Kidd Pivot) makes no such assertions, although it has the readiest of claims. The laughing and weeping masks known as “sock and buskin” have symbolized comedy and tragedy since the Greeks. This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. Photo by Michael Slobodian Revisor is also as hilarious and entertaining, as it is depressing and dark – in fact in the middle deconstruction section I actually felt guilty for laughing at the first part, for although it’s funny, it’s incredibly sad because of the thread of truth of the subject matter. One could look at her group combinations for hours, her dancers moving through space as if they were flocks of birds reacting to each others echo. Their combination of choreographer and actor/writer/director is not only dance-theatre gold, but allows for an incredibly rich interplay between words and movement. Of course, this feels like a self-reflexive comment on the nonsense that is bureaucratic language, but it leaves an audience unsure of what content they’re meant to retain. Canadian Stage brings Kidd Pivot’s latest dance-theatre hybrid work to Toronto. It was as though the darkest corners of a man’s mind had been externalized to create an original form. In Revisor , eight Kidd Pivot dancers embody the recorded dialogue of some of Canada’s finest actors, exploring conflict, comedy and corruption in the potent relationship between language and the body. Then it falls apart. An ensemble construction has the eight dancers moving in unison, engendering a sense of anxiety and threat through a streamlined flow of steps that is offset, suddenly, by staccato details. And while it’s certainly beautifully designed, and showcases some excellent trademark Pite choreography, it lacks a narrative entry point that can make the story resonate emotionally or let its content sink into our hearts. When the Canadian duo of the choreographer Crystal Pite and the writer Jonathon Young brought their Betroffenheit to Sadler’s Wells four years ago it proved a big hit. Nobody knows who the investigator is, and the young political detainee who’s mistaken for him promptly takes advantage of the error. The successor to Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young’s Betroffenheit (2015), a profound dance/theatre piece about grief, is the duo’s Revisor, a work as comic as the other was serious. Revisor continues at Toronto’s Bluma Appel Theatre until March 16. As impressive as Revisor looks form a distance, though, it remains at a remove from our hearts, where Betroffenheit keeps an unshakeable residence. In Revisor, their newest collaboration, choreographer Crystal Pite and writer-actor Jonathon Young have combined the farcical and the serious in one sharply divergent show, lifting the curtain on the tears hiding behind the merriment. Renée Sigouin, Cindy Salgado, Rena Narumi, Tiffany Tregarthen, Matthew Peacock, Jermaine Spivey, David Raymond, and Doug Letheren in Revisor. At its world premiere in Vancouver last night, Kidd Pivot’s Revisor had enough electricity to blow out the substation down the street at Cathedral Square. Sadler’s Wells; the Place, LondonCrystal Pite and Jonathon Young take Gogol to extremes, while Joan Clevillé puts the agony into Antigone. ‘Writhing contortions’: Solène Weinachter in Antigone, Interrupted. Readers can also interact with The Globe on Facebook and Twitter . There is a striking clarity and intelligence with which Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young approach narrative. Crystal Pite & Jonathon Young / Kidd Pivot — Revisor. What a magnificent evening! But the section never quite lands emotionally, partly because of the overdetermined nature of the narrated text that accompanies it. Scoop a new vibe in the numbers and do today’s Daily Sudoku. Revisor concerns emotions and activities like greed, manipulation and ambition which are less noble or pure. A lavishly theatrical dance work that reinvents the genre. A performance capture of REVISOR: the latest critically acclaimed dance-theatre production created by award-winning choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathon Young. Pite and Young merged performance types with similar irony and openness to deconstruction in Betroffenheit in 2015 and in The Statement in 2018. David Raymond gets a stunning solo under a flashing lamp, in which time seems to fast-forward because of sudden oscillations in the lighting (designed by Tom Visser). Kidd Pivot’s Tiffany Tregarthen in Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young’s Revisor Photo: Michael Slobodian. The Revisor is a contemporary revision of the original 1836 play, – The Government Inspector, by Russian dramatist Nikolai Gogol – and a continuation of a growing artistic relationship between choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathan Young, who have in the past successfully combined words and dance to a great effect. Sadler’s Wells, London March 3, 2020. The dancers inhabit and inflate archetypal characters, jutting their heads with monstrous muscularity as they seek to intimidate, crawling subserviently around their boss or swarming together in a whispering huddle. Those minutes are wonderful. Comments that violate our community guidelines will not be posted. Performed and narrated by Solène Weinachter, this tragedy about Oedipus’s daughter Antigone features lines from Sophocles’s original play of 441BC, along with comical interjections. Avoid the use of toxic and offensive language. Emotionally, we’re not entirely invested. When the Canadian duo of the choreographer Crystal Pite and the writer Jonathon Young brought their Betroffenheit to Sadler’s Wells four years ago it proved a big hit. Click here to subscribe. Weinachter flails, crawls, tips over and, for several excruciating minutes, acts like a dog, snarling, barking, growling, snuffling, howling and baying. Save In Revisor, choreographer Crystal Pite and theatre-maker Jonathon Young once again sync their worlds together. The droning, Siri-like voiceover, repeating a choreographer’s musings about choreography, is grating, as is the self-indulgent recitation of dance notations (“Section 2 dash 2, Figure 1 meets Figure 9”). Some information in it may no longer be current. We aim to create a safe and valuable space for discussion and debate. It has the tendency to feel like an act of building, elaborating and collaging rather than one of exquisite distillation. Performed at Canadian Stage ’s Bluma Appel Theatre, the highly sought after choreographer, Crystal Pite, reworks what is possible in the hybrid form, creating one of her most brilliant works yet. Insofar as the work has a protagonist it’s the character of the Revisor (Tiffany Tregarthen/Jonathon Young), who is initially held in the complex’s run-down underground chambers, before the debacle of mistaken identity ensues. Canadians Crystal Pite, choreographer, and Jonathon Young, playwright, delve into Nikolai Gogol’s savage satire on corruption in 19th-century Russia to create a thrilling multi-layered work, that’s raised to astounding heights by the eight fabulous dancers of Pite’s own Kidd Pivot company. Kidd Pivot ’s Revisor completely revamps the relationship between contemporary dance and theatre. Otherwise, this amateurish storytelling session is didactic, dull and patronising as hell; there’s even a shout-out to refugees, activists and “black bodies… not doing what they’re told”. This is a partnership made in heaven, as the mix of classical directing and acting knowhow with dance expertise is utterly idiosyncratic. Thank you for your patience. Revisor is like no dance show you have ever seen, replacing almost all of the music with pre-recorded dialogue to which Crystal Pite has choreographed the most … This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. Revisor marks the artistic reunion of top-tier artists Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young, co-creators of the internationally acclaimed Betroffenheit. Young and Pite revise an archetypal comic plot (Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector) to serve as the basis for a production that blends contemporary theatre and dance. He accepts bribes, drinks and cavorts with the director’s wife – he’s a not a character who can set up any narrative structure for redemption. Jonathon Young and Crystal Pite revise an archetypal comic plot to serve as the basis for choreography in a true hybrid of contemporary theatre and dance. Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young’s Revisor at Sadler’s Wells in London closes tonight. Review. Never before has an hour felt longer or more agonising than the actual Theban war. Charlotte Kasner. A performance capture of Revisor, created by award-winning dance-theatre makers Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young and based on Nikolai Gogol's play The Government Inspector. Crystal Pite’s choreography is shaped by this atmosphere of shabby compromise and dirty deals. There are truisms about an artist’s sophomore effort – the creative work birthed in the shadow of a brilliant older sibling. When the Revisor is sent off to a bedroom with “a view,” there’s a magisterial paned-window that rises to the rafters and evocatively suggests a world where truths are obscured by distorted perceptions, by shadow and glass. Canadian Stage brings Kidd Pivot’s latest dance-theatre hybrid work to Toronto. There is so much dialogue – and it contains so much detail about systems, rules, ministries, protocol – that any attempt to understand what’s going on is self-defeating. Rather, because of the middle dance section where we feel we have experienced the characters’ inner lives, we … Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young’s recent collaboration, seen at Sadler’s Wells, requires mental agility, concentration and some knowledge of an unfashionable 19 th century Russian farce from which it is inspired. In it, we revisit scenes and sequences from the show’s first part, but it’s as though the fog of corruption has burned off, and we’re able to see with a kind of philosophical clarity. Read our, I'm a print subscriber, link to my account, Read more about following topics and authors. It’s interesting to see them twitch, glitch, strobe and stagger through repeated micro-movements. As with the searing Betroffenheit and wire-taut The Statement, Revisor finds Pite’s phenomenal dancers performing a kind of physical lip-syncing to scripted voiceovers by Young’s actors. What a magnificent evening! Any actual dance amounts to barely five minutes. Names like Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young are well established with their careers, but Canadians can be proud that productions like Betroffenheit and Revisor are … Choreographer Crystal Pite’s work is always deeply thrilling—her ability to bring an audience into a transformed alternate reality is her trademark. Corruption, lies and haunting beauty: Revisor is a danced comedy with a strange, lyrical heart. Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young’s Revisor trails a string of questions Somewhere between absurd Dadaism and operetta silliness, the Russian playwright Nikolai Gogol has a sharp talent for exposing the uglier underbelly of society just as you were laughing out loud. UPDATED: Read our community guidelines here. It’s here that we get some striking sequences of choreography – bodies are pliable, muscular and able to express unspeakable ideas. Pite has described how Revisor has links to Betroffenheit, a dark, traumatic personal journey, ameliorated by “showtime” when the central character is on drugs and deliriously happy show biz dance is the order of the day. The lightning-fast dance-acting functions as a send-up of cartoon villainy, theatrical mugging and cinematic overacting while keeping Gogol’s themes of deception, bureaucracy, inept rulers, infiltration and political scheming. © Copyright 2021 The Globe and Mail Inc. All rights reserved. The unthinkability of its subject matter – the death of Young’s teenage daughter and her cousins in a cabin fire and Young’s subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder – seemed to demand the engendering of something aesthetically new, and the production’s synthesis of recursive voiceover, choreography and aggressively evocative design felt innovative. The setting is a government complex in a Russian interior ministry where a group of outlandish and corrupt bureaucrats believe they’re hosting an important inspector. If you are looking to give feedback on our new site, please send it along to, To view this site properly, enable cookies in your browser. But Gogol’s themes are junked, as are any humour, irony or sense of play. In Revisor, her second collaboration with writer Jonathon Young, we are witness to a darkly surreal world that is presented to us both as farce and warning. Choreographed and directed by Crystal Pite, performed by her company, Kidd Pivot, and written by theatre-maker Jonathon Young, the wonderful first part of Revisor (2019) is simultaneously highbrow and lowbrow, broad and sophisticated. Instead, truth is evinced in Revisor’s abstract middle section. Voiceover actors narrate the story while dancers mouth the words and act them out, costumed as various petty dictatorship stereotypes and surrounded by expensive, dictatory office furniture. The Revisor is a contemporary revision of the original 1836 play, – The Government Inspector, by Russian dramatist Nikolai Gogol – and a continuation of a growing artistic relationship between choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathan Young, who have in the past successfully combined words and dance to a great effect. Antigone, Interrupted is Barcelona-born Joan Clevillé’s first work as artistic director of Scottish Dance Theatre. Star ratings (out of five)Revisor ★★★Antigone, Interrupted ★. The dancers loved the “showtime” section so much that Young had to step in and say, “it’s enough now.” There are belly-slapping, sauntering, drunken wedding dances; the writhing contortions of injured soldiers; a full-tilt backwards run, the body stiff and angular, like broken branches batted by the wind; and the splayed knees, back-tilted head and defensively braced arms of slaughtered families. The comedy comes from the interplay between their caricaturized voices and their physical personas. With Revisor, a retelling of Gogol’s 1836 play The Government Inspector, Pite and Young seem to repurpose that form rather than let the new material generate a fresh one. Revisor When Crystal Pite puts her talent in the service of music – Partita for 8 dancers (NDT, 2018) for example – the effect is mesmerizing. 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