Dance review: Even more to unpack in second viewing of Kidd Pivot's Revisor
Dark visions, mesmerizing dance, and new meaning, as Crystal Pite’s vision speaks directly to the state of the world
Revisor. Photo by Michael Slobodian
DanceHouse presents Kidd Pivot’s Revisor at the Vancouver Playhouse to April 2
KIDD PIVOT’S Revisor runs with the intricacy of a fine Swiss watch, and that’s part of what makes the chance to see it again such a treat for Vancouverites.
The show is making a stop here on the DanceHouse program before embarking on a European tour. Back when celebrated choreographer Crystal Pite’s co-creation with theatre artist Jonathon Young had its world premiere here in 2019, a lot of the reaction was sheer wonder and surprise.
A second look at this work, inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play The Inspector General, gives us the opportunity to admire the elaborate machinery that keeps Revisor moving at such a brisk tempo. You’ll also find additional layers of meaning in the words that loop and repeat and stre-e-e-tch with the physicality of the dancers. Fans can go deep into how Pite and Young warp and play with time and space.
Case in point: it took a second viewing to appreciate the eerie, streaky lights jagging across the background in the opening moments—signalling that this isn’t just a straight-up pantomime of Gogol’s comedy. Instead, the effect hints that we’ve been plunged into some kind of suspended reality—a point taken to extremes in the work’s second half, when we hear the script repeat and fragment like it’s echoing in from some other dimension.
In other words, much more is going on than mimicry, as the dancers lip-sync and exaggerate the voice-over script and physical comedy of the Russian farce. At one point, Jermaine Spivey’s wonderfully rubbery Postmaster madly tries to stuff bad news back down his throat. At another, a scene of drunken carousing turns into a sustained, acrobatic tumble of bodies across the room.
The timeliness of Revisor this time out is simply chilling. Gogol’s original is a political satire in which a lowly bureaucrat, the Revisor (a lithe and expressive Gregory Lau), is mistaken for a high-powered government official after being sent to a small town. The locals subsequently fall all over themselves to bribe and suck up to him. It is about power and corruption run amok, an idea that resonates as Russia continues to invade Ukraine.
Later in the work, when Pite fractures the action and reflects it back through pure dance, the looping spoken text of the soundtrack singles out words like “dissidents” and “mass graves”, giving all the silliness a nightmarish edge.
Perhaps it’s the state of the world, but—despite the big laughs and hyperstylized physical comedy—Revisor feels darker this time around.
That holds especially true for a hallucinatory scene in which a folkloric costume from the first half takes mutant form in the second. When Renée Sigouin stalks across the stage, part human, part beast, it’s somehow as poignant as it is surreal.
While Revisor is heavy, it’s also massively entertaining. Just ask the audience that gave it a sustained standing-O on opening night. The dance-theatre hybrid can be enjoyed on multiple levels—and there is a lot of laughter. Sheer joy also comes in watching the stagecraft of a piece that rolls desks, doors, beds, and towering multipane windows around moving sculptures of dancers. It has the fluidity of a dream; as the dance neophyte sitting in front of me said after the show, “Wow.”
For Pite fans, we get elastic physical-comedy skills in the first half, and virtuosic technique in the second. Four new cast members add to the strong performances across the board. Ballet BC alumnus Brandon Alley shows crack clowning chops to go along with his technical rigour as the Revisor’s assistant. Israeli talent Ella Rothschild is a standout villain as Minister Desouza in severe Eastern European braids.
Helped by the smart script and soundscape (care of Owen Belton, Meg Roe, and Alessandro Juliani), Revisor’s sense of limbo speaks volumes to the surreal world we’ve been stuck in for the past few years. One of the most indelible moments circles back to a scene where the Revisor is rolling out of bed. But this time, he can’t quite get up, glitching like a stuck video character in front of us. If that doesn’t say just about everything about existence right now, I’m not sure what does. As the Revisor says late in the work, arms folded forlornly over his head, the voice-over not so much asking but stating, “Why am I here. What does it all mean”. We can all relate.
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