One thing we should probably just get out of the way now is acknowledging that there is clearly a less than zero percent chance of there being anyone alive who is currently torn between spending their birthday theatre vouchers on either Mamma Mia! or Cow | Deer.
Even if you have never heard of the legendary avant-garde director Katie Mitchell, it seems fairly inconceivable that you would book into Cow | Deer – a play whose publicity information clear states that it is about a cow and deer and features no dialogue – and go expecting a night of high octane commercial theatre lulz.
The caveat, then, is that if you think Cow | Deer sounds like a horrible idea then I am not here to convince you otherwise. Don’t take a risk on it! You probably would actually hate it. See Mamma Mia!
Admin over, let’s get down to business. Cow | Deer is at heart a virtuosic Mitchell-directed foley performance in which a quartet of actors (Pandora Colin, Tom Espiner, Tatenda Matavai and Ruth Sullivan) deploy a colossal array of objects – from hay bales to hot water bottles – to create the sounds of a cow and also a deer.
They’re augmented by sound design from Melanie Wilson that mostly consists of wildlife noises (lots of birdsong, lots of cows, ie no mooing actors) and a script from Nina Segal that imposes a degree of discipline and direction.
At first I tried to get immersed in it it: close your eyes and you can practically see the deer frolicking free through nature, and the cow living a more industrialised life at a nearby farm. After a while I’m sorry to say I got a bit bored of this: I understand that the show is explicitly designed to de-centre humanity from its storytelling, but around the middle it feels like it has become somewhat vague as to what the beasts are actually up to. I drifted off.
Then I stopped closing my eyes and really looked at what the performers were actually doing. It’s a fascinating duality of Mitchell’s production that while it really is about a deer and a cow and has a very ‘pro-nature’ lens, it is also a dazzlingly coordinated exercise in pure artifice, almost a sort of vindication of human ingenuity. The four actors are in constant, fluid motion as they fiddle with everything from glittery pom poms to what looks like bundles of herbs to conjure the beasts and their world. It’s hypotonic, like a dance - I became utterly engrossed in the dizzying technical rhythms of the Mitchell-directed performance.
And then towards the end the story kicks back in and its themes of humanity intruding upon nature come to an unnerving denouement – maybe I’d given up on trying to picture the animals, but the show's message and meaning feel clearer than ever.
Even as a dyed in the wool Katie Mitchell fan I definitely went on a journey with Cow | Deer. But it persuaded me by the end. Nobody makes theatre like Katie Mitchell, and her latest is an audacious technical exercise paired with a bracingly earnest message.
