But values which make us live much as we lived at the beginning, like peasants, because we had nothing."If you are poor economically, you are rich in time you can waste all the time you wish to make a performance to the best of your abilities. What is very tragic is that even young theatre-makers who are in such situations are already contaminated by the industrial way of thinking of theatre. They want very quickly to produce productions and show them and be recognised."In a world that fetishises the 15-minute, fresh-faced famous, and in a theatre culture that is sublimated to the processes of profit, subsidy and scheduling, that's fighting talk. But Barba is a romantic; he sees theatre not as a job, but a vocation Of rootless Odin he says, "our country is this profession. We have a pride such as used to exist in artisanship and which now seems to have been lost."Mythos is an elegy to that pride, as well as to the principles in which its real-life rebel, the Brazilian Guilhermino Barbosa, believed.
"For us to speak of revolution today would make people of all generations laugh," says Barba.His show is a folksy, physical ensemble piece in which a cast of classical figures usher that old socialist ideal, in the form of Barbosa, from the reality into the realm of myth. In the absence of revolution, Odin will keep the flag flying subject to some urgent in-house training. "My assistant," marvels Barba, "who was 25 years old when we prepared this performance, asked me, 'What is this song, "The Internationale"? It works very well. Is it from South America?'"'Mythos': Salisbury Playhouse (01722 320333), Weds to Sat. "Stel-la-a!" bawls the newly-wed Chas to his bride, but the situation is hardly that of Marlon Brando's mating call. Chas, at 60, is experiencing for the first time not only marriage but the opposite sex and most of ordinary life He has spent several decades in a mental institution.
Stella (whose middle name is Dallas perhaps not the best augury for happy married life) puts on a pink nightie and lies hopefully on the bed Chas starts to kiss her and freezes. He likes to dress up like Fred Astaire, play his records, and spin Stella about, but nothing in the old films has taught him what Fred and Ginger do when the lights go out.It's no surprise that Stephanie McKnight's play shows Chas in many nervous, wondering encounters with all the aspects of everyday life we take for granted ("I didn't get my own kettle till I was 37 It was a great privilege I had to work for it"). Or that Chas, who is "fastidious" ("I read it on my file once. So I had to look it up"), has a series of prissy rituals that, while imitating reality, hold it at bay.
