Destination
The Play
Destination is a compelling account of power and oppression explored
through the relationship of a domineering mother and her reticent daughter.
They have grown up in the shadow of a once thriving but now crumbling
foundry. The annual escape from this industrial graveyard to their summer
sea-side retreat is thrown into turmoil when a young and brilliant avant-garde
playwright is invited to join them. The guilt-ridden mother struggles
to find meaning from her past and to embrace the possibility of change
and revolution in the future, whatever the outcome or cost. A tense
and blackly comic evening where pain and humour, cynicism and optimism,
nihilism and faith battle for supremacy in this British premiere of
Bernhard's brilliantly driven play.
Destination is a new translation by Jan-willem
van den Bosch of Am Ziel, one of Thomas Bernhard's most poignant
and comic plays. Born in Holland in 1931, Bernhard, who lived all of
his life in Austria, is one of the most important and original voices
of modern European theatre. His dark absurdist plays recall the spirit
of Kafka, Beckett and Pinter. He is, however, virtually unknown in Britain,
since very few of his eighteen full-length stage plays have been translated
into English. He is an exuberant and prolific novelist poet and playwright
with a uniquely lyrical and bilious writing style. His darkly comic,
anarchic voice speaks through his extraordinary characters and his plays
present an eccentric picture of humanity and the modern world, preoccupied
as he is with such cultural and political concerns as authority, appearance
and reality, madness and social responsibility.
Destination is directed by the acclaimed Kathryn
Hunter, long-time collaborator with the translator van den Bosch
and justly celebrated as one of Britain's leading theatre practitioners
- renowned both as a director and performer. This is the first time
that Volcano will have worked with Kathryn Hunter and we expect this
to be a highly creative collaboration for both director and company.
Our aim is to develop a highly visual theatrical style: distinctive
enough to match Bernhard's poetic vision and accessible enough to unlock
the abstract complexity of the play itself. Bernhard's writing is musical
so that rhythm, tempo and silence lend meaning to thought and ideas.
We have worked closely with choreographer Marcello
Magni to find a physical expression
of this music, and with composer Patrick
Fitzgerald to evoke atmosphere and tension.
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