Review: Assembly Hall

Based in a healthy recognition that the stage is a space that can revel in symbolism, Assembly Hall is simultaneously a celebration of performance’s power to explore abstract concepts and a study in alienation and disconnection. Beginning with a committee that faces its own dissolution, it descends into a murky and imaginative recreation of a medieval hero’s journey, it alludes to the capacity of myth to infuse meaning into the apparently mundane and forges a distinctive movement vocabulary.

With the ensemble embodying a jerky choreography, the movements twitch and jive in robotic dance, illustrating the amplified arguments surrounding the status of a group of live-action role-players who are trying to decide whether they can save their organisation. They are displaced by the medieval characters who might be part of their annual convention, with the knight thrust into a gloomy adventure which folds back into their debates: it is suggestive, obscure and passionate, linking the contemporary business of entertainment and the deeper, metaphysical meanings of role-play.

Whether it is a wryly ironic take on self-importance or a compassionate statement about the stories that lend meaning to life is never quite clear. Indeed, the gloomy lighting and wayward, episodic structure generate a sinister sense of chaos and disenchantment. By times witty and intense, Assembly Hall speaks ambiguously to the construction of communities and the rituals that hold an occult power over mundane activities.