The Trial

Belt Up, who have a rough and ready intimacy with their audience, could also learn a thing or two from site specific gurus Punchdrunk about how to touch them. Acting a role (as some do in 'Tartuffe') or being blindfolded and herded (as we all are in the dark parable 'The Trial') are leaps of faith: the audience deserves to be led and included rather than mocked and pushed around. The thrill of touching your audience is hard to reconcile with Kafka's stories, where alienation and precision go hand in mandible. Belt Up injects a sense of horror, sexual corruption and bewilderment into this spooky staging of 'The Trial', in which mysterious scenes and characters briefly light up the dark holes and corners of this railway arch space. But the journey of Josef K, arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious machinery of court and forced to confront the absence of a higher judge, can't be shared by the audience when we are bunched up into a bemused and wary herd, instead of individually exploring what it means to be alone. As a calling card this double bill (with 'The Tartuffe') is impressive, and as schizophrenic as the masks of comedy and tragedy themselves. It's not yet the finished article, but it's a great trailer for whatever they do next.