Theatre: World Without Us

Four stars

THERE’S a tang of apprehension in the air at the queue for World Without Us. Presented as part of the Big In Belgium programme at Summerhall, Ontroerend Goed are a company whose reputation precedes them. They’ve both delighted audiences with productions such as 2008’s Once And For All We’re Going To Tell You Who We Are – a fizzing celebration of youthful exuberance – and appalled.

Scottish playwright Rob Drummond walked out of Internal, their 2009 show which involved audience members being seduced into admitting their darkest secrets to a cast member only to have them shared with others.

In 2011’s Audience, a female spectator was told she could put a stop to being taunted by a performer by “spreading her legs”. The audience were asked to collaborate with the bully, reassured that it was okay to do so as it was in the name of art – the persecutor was trying to recreate Courbert’s graphic 1866 painting L’Origine du Monde.

Some were outraged, others felt a sense of betrayal. Were Ontroerend Goed (a rough translation of which is: “feel estate”) simply nihilistic trolls wearing the hipster clothes of provocation? Most likely not. Founder Alexander Devriendt intended the part – subsequently played by a plant – to expose the nature of free will and how easily people are manipulated into siding with an oppressor. In his company’s shows, the audience are not usually passive spectators – something is usually expected of them. And often that something is discomfort at the least.

It’s curious then, that World Without Us opens with excerpts from the record aboard the Voyager probes, warm greetings to the universe expressed in 55 languages. Whatever they have in store is going to be particularly disturbing, I thought. But no. Twenty minutes in, the Main Hall feels womblike. The only patch of light surrounds Valentijn Dhaenens, whose gentle cadences have lulled us into something of a meditative state. That he’s talking about the show’s title – literally, what Earth would be like without the presence of humans – does not seem disturbing, at least for now. And time is a central theme of World Without Us. Measured time, is, after all, a human invention, the 24-hour clock only popularised as the industrial revolution powered what would become modern capitalism. A decade or so after humanity’s disappearing act (we’ve just vanished apparently, a scientific impossibility which may provoke anger in any physicists here) so too have the ways we measure time. Analogue clocks have no-one to wind them up, ornamental sundials are covered with lichen and creepers – digital clocks failed years ago. “There is still day and night but the animals have more time now,” says Dhaenens, referring to the insects and rodents now scurrying among the very seats. A rat chews the upholstery, the glue underneath fatally poisons her.

“There is no-one here to turn it into an event,” he says, occasionally walking around the only piece of set – a black pillar around three metres high. A clock tower perhaps, or a reference to the mysterious obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Summerhall’s roof finally gives in to the forces of the weather – “just 25 human generations,” Dhaenens notes. Things are happening elsewhere: mass extinctions as the planet warms, a bank safe is buried beneath layers of volcanic lava. In it, the will of a man who wanted his collection of musical instruments not to be sold for at least 50 years after his death. “He has imagined a world without him,” Dhaenens says. Had he imagined a world without anyone, however? And does anything really happen without someone to witness it?

Like Audience, and 2014’s Sirens – a provocative, feminist piece addressing the challenges of contemporary womanhood – the strength of this piece is in the questions it poses. From human psychology and our need for a sense of significance or immortality, our impact on the planet and the nature of reality itself, the most profound issues there are are raised here. Though the pacing of the monologue – which will be performed by another actor, Karolinen de Bleser, from August 15 – leaves space in which to reflect, its length and lulling tone may leave the eyelids of those not enlivened by such questions drooping. Devriendt once said the reason Ontroerend Goed existed was “to show how your view of the world is mostly a projection of your own inner world”. For those with the patience and curiosity to stay the course, they’ve quietly achieved that here.

Until Aug 28 (not 15, 22), Summerhall (V26), 11.30am (90 mins), £12 (£10 concs). Tel: 0131 560 1581