Sunstroke, Belka Productions
Question: what do Somerset Cider, artisan breads and skip load of sand have in common? Answer: they are all features of Oleg Mirochnikov and Belkin Production’s latest project Sunstroke. I went along on press night last Friday at the brand new Central St Martin’s building at Kings Cross. The building itself is something of an eclectic masterpiece. The warehouse space was originally designed by Thomas Cubitt and once held much of London’s stocks of wheat. Now it is possible to go roller skating or play ping pong in its cavernous spaces. After dark the plaza fountains light up in coloured sequences making the courtyard a pleasant open public space, a rarity indeed in Kings Cross. New destination restaurants such as the Grain Store and Caravan are attaching media attention and bringing new people to a previously lifeless part of the city. I was impressed enough to wander around for too long and made myself late for the performance.
The Platform Theatre space sits to the rear of the St Martin’s Building in a constructivist inspired elevated box. The timber, slate and glass give the façade geometric depth and a 3D texture. It looks both functional and a creative modern space without the brutal slab-like austerity of The Barbican. Huge credit to its designers Stanton Williams for being adventurous.
The space inside the theatre is multi functional and well planned. The bar is long enough to facilitate interval drinkers quickly enough, very commercially astute. I got talking to a cider producer who happened to be a friend of Oliver King, founder member and lead actor of Belka Productions, who happens also to be a producer and seller of artisan bread at Waterloo’s weekend food market. Of course he does. The cider punch by The Somerset Ploughmen was made with over forty types of apples and angostura bitter, highly recommended if you see them on any of London’s markets or food festivals. Other random links were a toga wearing, venik wielding masseuse from Banya No. 1 and food from the Russian Revels team and their ingenious pop up Russian canteen brand. It is rapidly attracting attention in the London based Russian community and there were a few familiar faces.
Belka Productions have been going since 2011, initially founded by Rosy Benjamin and bread-producing Oliver King. Their previous production, A Warsaw Melody, ran at the Arcola Theatre last year and next year they plan to show A Dashing Fellow at the New Diorama Theatre based on the works of Vladimir Nabokov: think Faustian Pacts with the devil, 1930s Moscow and you won’t be far away.
Sunstroke is an ambitious theatre project. It merges Ivan Bunin’s short story Sunstroke with Chekhov’s The Lady with The Dog. Both stories are enacted at the same time on two stages, one at either end of a floor of sand with the audience sitting on either sides of the rectangle. Both stories centre around adultery; its complications, pleasures and tortures. There are only four characters portraying two different affairs. Stephen Pucci’s performance as Dimitri the Moscow banker that Chekhov sent to the dusty boredom of Yalta in The Lady with the Dog is believable and energetic. Together with Rosy Benjamin their portrayal of the despair brought about by their accidental entanglement is simply rendered without having to resort to any complex staging.
Meanwhile, Oliver King and retired supermodel and wannabe actress, Katia Elizarova, play Bunin’s lead characters the Lieutenant and the beautiful stranger on board their Crimean cruise ship. Theirs is an altogether lighter, dancing and even fluffy interaction, in sharp contrast to the other end of the room.
Like Complicite Theatre’s recent adaptation of The Master and Margarita, the production uses projected images to effectively and simply convey whole scenes of action. Belkin’s rather clever handwriting sequences are used to convey months of torturous correspondence. Katia’s performance is coquettish and believably shallow and skittish, as her character is intended to be. It will be interesting to see if she manages to continue on with her supermodel-acting-cross-over.
Physical theatre is something I like, but can often find myself a bit lost by. I sometimes feel like I am perhaps the only person in the audience who doesn’t quite get it. By the interval in Sunstroke I was at a loss to explain what renowned Japanese dancer Masumi Saito was trying to tell us. You can see the power and grace in her carefully controlled Japanese sequences, but without any obvious link to the story. It was only tied together in the final sequences where she physically shadows and mirrors the mental torments of the male characters. Her wicker basket contains a perfume bottle. This is a representation of the genie-in-the-bottle. Her physical expression is the genie, in this case the affairs themselves. Once the genie is out, can it ever go back in? It is clear by the end of the play that her dance is the physical embodiment of the question, can things ever be the same again?
It is a challenging medium in an intimate setting and deserves to be seen. I hope it is well received for its bravery and inventiveness.
Belka Productions | Productions | Sunstroke
The Platform Theatre space sits to the rear of the St Martin’s Building in a constructivist inspired elevated box. The timber, slate and glass give the façade geometric depth and a 3D texture. It looks both functional and a creative modern space without the brutal slab-like austerity of The Barbican. Huge credit to its designers Stanton Williams for being adventurous.
The space inside the theatre is multi functional and well planned. The bar is long enough to facilitate interval drinkers quickly enough, very commercially astute. I got talking to a cider producer who happened to be a friend of Oliver King, founder member and lead actor of Belka Productions, who happens also to be a producer and seller of artisan bread at Waterloo’s weekend food market. Of course he does. The cider punch by The Somerset Ploughmen was made with over forty types of apples and angostura bitter, highly recommended if you see them on any of London’s markets or food festivals. Other random links were a toga wearing, venik wielding masseuse from Banya No. 1 and food from the Russian Revels team and their ingenious pop up Russian canteen brand. It is rapidly attracting attention in the London based Russian community and there were a few familiar faces.
Belka Productions have been going since 2011, initially founded by Rosy Benjamin and bread-producing Oliver King. Their previous production, A Warsaw Melody, ran at the Arcola Theatre last year and next year they plan to show A Dashing Fellow at the New Diorama Theatre based on the works of Vladimir Nabokov: think Faustian Pacts with the devil, 1930s Moscow and you won’t be far away.
Sunstroke is an ambitious theatre project. It merges Ivan Bunin’s short story Sunstroke with Chekhov’s The Lady with The Dog. Both stories are enacted at the same time on two stages, one at either end of a floor of sand with the audience sitting on either sides of the rectangle. Both stories centre around adultery; its complications, pleasures and tortures. There are only four characters portraying two different affairs. Stephen Pucci’s performance as Dimitri the Moscow banker that Chekhov sent to the dusty boredom of Yalta in The Lady with the Dog is believable and energetic. Together with Rosy Benjamin their portrayal of the despair brought about by their accidental entanglement is simply rendered without having to resort to any complex staging.
Meanwhile, Oliver King and retired supermodel and wannabe actress, Katia Elizarova, play Bunin’s lead characters the Lieutenant and the beautiful stranger on board their Crimean cruise ship. Theirs is an altogether lighter, dancing and even fluffy interaction, in sharp contrast to the other end of the room.
Like Complicite Theatre’s recent adaptation of The Master and Margarita, the production uses projected images to effectively and simply convey whole scenes of action. Belkin’s rather clever handwriting sequences are used to convey months of torturous correspondence. Katia’s performance is coquettish and believably shallow and skittish, as her character is intended to be. It will be interesting to see if she manages to continue on with her supermodel-acting-cross-over.
Physical theatre is something I like, but can often find myself a bit lost by. I sometimes feel like I am perhaps the only person in the audience who doesn’t quite get it. By the interval in Sunstroke I was at a loss to explain what renowned Japanese dancer Masumi Saito was trying to tell us. You can see the power and grace in her carefully controlled Japanese sequences, but without any obvious link to the story. It was only tied together in the final sequences where she physically shadows and mirrors the mental torments of the male characters. Her wicker basket contains a perfume bottle. This is a representation of the genie-in-the-bottle. Her physical expression is the genie, in this case the affairs themselves. Once the genie is out, can it ever go back in? It is clear by the end of the play that her dance is the physical embodiment of the question, can things ever be the same again?
It is a challenging medium in an intimate setting and deserves to be seen. I hope it is well received for its bravery and inventiveness.
Belka Productions | Productions | Sunstroke