A Matter of Chance
The Kosh
Odeon Theatre
The most decisive events often depend on the slightest chances, the longest coincidences, the merest whims. Vladimir Nabokov, master of pale ironies and constructor of crystalline prose, wrote A Matter of Chance in 1924. It concerns a Russian emigre couple, separated by circumstances, who, unknown to each other, are both travelling on the Berlin-Paris Express.
The woman, neurasthenic with hunger and anxiety, has been following various leads in the hope of being reunited with her husband. He, suicidally depressed, is working on the train as a waiter in the dining car. Unfolding like a languid thriller, the story has us always wondering whether a Zhivago like resolution is going to take place.
Adapted by Roger McGough and performed by English dance company, The Kosh, under the direction of Michael Merwitzer and Sian Williams, A Matter of Chance, has an enticing idea to work with. The opening scene – passengers in homburgs and drab gabardine, shuffling in formation with their suitcases along the platform – promises much. It is visually strong, enhanced by the strong synthesised chords from Howard Davidson’s score, but hardly has the whistle blown than A Matter of Chance heads for a destination unknown.
There is an unresolved contradiction between text and action which burdens the work. The story, elegant, suggestive, neurotic, is essentially about alienation and separation – but the action consists of highly tactile tumbling and acrobatics which is entirely dissonant. The point of the story is that lives don’t touch and yet everywhere the performers are cheerfully flipping and connecting with positivistic certainty.
The design also is discrepant. The George Grosz cartoon grotesquery of the Man in Beige, the bright red and yellow stripes of the railway guards and the heavy crayon make-up and fabric patterning, lends a pop Weimar dimension but, abstracted, satiric and generic, this works against idiosyncratic, almost fin-de siecle decadence.
A Matter of Chance offers plenty of opportunity for railway noises and vigorous mime, but instead of going to the plaintive heart of its object, it takes us round the houses instead.
“Off the Rails” The Adelaide Review, No.74, March, 1990, p.31.