'Admirable, shocking and compelling,' Lorna Irvine reviews Vanishing Point's contribution to Mayfesto.
Vanishing Point's follow-up to the controversial Wonderland is almost critic-proof: not political play, performance or autobiographical monologue but rather all three.
Devised and performed by Serbian Damir Todorovic and taken from his diaries of 1993, it is based on his experiences of conflict while stationed in Bosnia as a nineteen year old soldier. The unreliable narrator in its truest sense was never more pertinent as Todorovic examines the lies we use to protect ourselves and others and the way memory can cloud over with the passing of time.
A simple polygraph, or lie detector, is hooked up and Irish actor/performer Pauline Goldsmith measures his responses in four ways as she interrogates him: through heart rate, skin conductivity (or sweat), breathing and blood pressure. Her results are recorded. Banal questions like 'do you like bananas?' are juxtaposed with 'have you ever killed somebody?" Soon, it becomes clear that Todorovic will not respond as simply as Goldsmith hopes for and verbal games are played. Both seem likeable people, but how much is characterisation and how much is real?
This much seems clear: that as a young man he witnessed a garage full of dead civilians on his first night in Bosnia; he loves his wife but finds it hard to trust people—especially authority figures, he wants to be a famous actor but also remain grounded. “Truth is like a veil covering me…it turns to stone and it breaks,” he says. The lines dividing truth and performance become a blur and it is hard not to feel complicit in Todorovic's discomfort, imagining the hell of a genocide that left over an estimated 200,000 civilians dead.
As It Is is an admirable, shocking and compelling piece which proves that it is often what remains unsaid that lingers longest, and makes us question our own integrity.
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