[Theatre & Physical Theatre/Comedy UK]

The Bally at Gluttony – Rymill Park, Sun 19th Feb 2023

Musing matters. Talk about flogging a dead horse. But by the end I just wanted to stay. Time must have passed, but I hadn’t noticed – the true test of good theatre. Now I didn’t want to go outside. We were all enjoying the conversation so much, pregnant with possibilities and potential. How do I return to my routine life after visiting ‘Horse Country?’ Shouldn’t I reset my vision and values? But that takes energy. How much do I have to expend, and how expandable am I? Or am I simply expendable?

This play gives a huge nod and knee bend to Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, although these are not tramps. They are more like two detectives on their day off who can’t stop talking shop, and there’s always a mystery to solve. The main one is what to do with their time. If a Surrealist and an Absurdist had a baby…or in this case brothers, since like family, each finishes the others’ thoughts. Until, that is, they realise they don’t know what the other is talking about anymore. As they continually point out, we live in a free country, a land of plenty. So logically, if anything breaks just buy another, and if it ain’t broke…but then, we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Anyway, why want, when we already have it all?

A madcap romp through the canyons of a country where wild horses roam, waiting to be tamed by us. (In Asia it’s the bull that must be ridden.) The metaphors come thick and fast, asking us how much of our true nature do we sacrifice, in order to function ‘normally’ and remain in our rut. “Existence consists of reassuring ourselves, elevated to an art form,” says writer CJ Hopkins through these highly adept performers. Lighting and active level changes provide ample variety to this dialogue.

Like the goddess Kali, man holds both powers of creation and destruction in his hands. When we do recreation, do we really ‘re-create’ ourselves? Do we allow art to challenge us anymore, or just go along with what other say? You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think; you may however teach it to fish. Trapped in a perpetual present, two characters try to dive below the surface to see if the fish are biting. But they are blinded by the mirror of reflection. We know we can’t return to the past, like we can’t unscramble an egg. And we can’t accelerate into the future, even when we put the carrot before the horse. Yet here it comes around again, the same subject as before. Until we ask, ‘which came first, the fish or the water?’ But this logically implies that we can’t repair our broken, wounded parts. So, to heal we must leave logic and look elsewhere; and Horse Country is as good a place as any to start.

Written by CJ Hopkins Presented by: Flying Bridge Theatre Company and Joanne Hartstone

Performed by Daniel Llewelyn-Williams and Michael Edwards.