[2013150] 2880 Minutes Late
Painted Tree @ The Soul Box
4:30pm, Sat 16 Mar 2013
“An intimate performance blending slam poetry and physical theatre,” said the Guide, and I was onboard.
But I’m not sure the production actually lived up to the précis… or, rather, what my imagination created from the précis.
Opening with a curious seated movement piece, performers Eleanor Stankiewicz and Benjamin Winckle start out sitting back-to-back in matching white t-shirts and denim jeans; there’s a plainness in their initial presentation that completely belies the complexity of the dialogue that follows. It’s certainly lyrically dense, with the content focusing on… well, I’m not really sure. I reckon there’s a fair few relationship metaphors in there, along with a treatise on infidelity, but then there was a protracted piece about the city, and chunks of the dialogue were done as verbal exchanges whilst other bits were rhymes and occasionally something approaching a song appears…
Whether it was a general tiredness, an end-of-Festival malaise, or simply because my brain was not firing on all four, I did not click with 2880 Minutes Late at all. I didn’t even figure out what the title was all about! And, whilst I could appreciate a few pieces of nice stage direction in the interactions of Stankiewicz and Winckle, and I giggled with glee when the dialogue would burst into fragments of verse, it just didn’t work for me. In the end, I just left The Soul Box a little disappointed that the idea in my mind didn’t match the production… but that’s entirely my fault, because what was on display was pretty polished.
(150) 2880 Minutes Late: densely lyrical mixed performance about… relationships? infidelity? Something, anyway. #ff2013 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) March 16, 2013