NOTHING PERSONAL

Norwegian National Ballet: Nothing Personal is powerfully moving

Uppermost amongst considerations in reviewing any performance is how it makes me feel and, on this criterion alone, Alan Lucien Øyen’s Nothing Personal smashed it out of the park. Two acts of arresting physical theatre provoked an unsteady flow of physical and emotional responses, including that all-too rare goose bump tingle with hairs raising at the base of my neck, plus the even rarer phenomenon of tears.

Øyen shines a spotlight on human connection in a world increasingly devoid of empathy, emphasised by the dehumanising rise of Artificial Intelligence. His direct lens focuses on three people living separately in an apartment block: an alcoholic mother; an elderly spinster; and a Jewish intellectual alone with his books. Each is troubled by a present clouded by torment: we come to learn that the mother’s young son is dead; the reclusive aged woman has suffered serial abuse; and the professor’s uncaring niece wants him to get rid of his precious library and replace it with a kindle!

This dramatic production for Norwegian National Ballet was dominated by an outstanding script (spoken in English and written by Øyen and Andrew Wale) with dance mostly illustrative of the text or showcased in brisk interludes of ensemble movement. Two regular presences led both the spoken and danced sides: Kate Pendry was Koryphaîos – the leader of the chorus and chief narrator; and Daniel Proietto danced the role of Patos in a gold mask and enormous 30cm-high gravity wedges (platform shoes without a heel) giving both the impression of black hooves and great height. His improvised solos, effectively on demi-pointe throughout, placed an ethereal envelope around the pathos.

Nothing Personal has a luscious score by Academy Award winning French composer, Alexandre Desplat. What a coup to attract a composer nominated ten times for Best Original Score in the Oscars®, resulting in a sweeping composition that must rate as one of the best new scores for dance theatre in many a year, superbly performed by the orchestra of the Norwegian Opera House under the direction of Solrey (Dominique Lemonnier; the composer’s wife).  

Each of the main characters has a backstory that Øyen unfolds with devastating emotional impact. Philomela – the alcoholic mother – is a rape victim who drinks to forget and neglects her son, Kaden – in one key scene she left him alone in a park until after dark – and following his violent death in a school massacre (the implication being that Kaden killed six schoolmates and himself with a Samurai sword), Philomela (Yvonne Øyen) paid for his digital avatar to be created by an unscrupulous AI company. An early scene where the living Kaden tries to stop his drunken mother going to work and they end up inconsolably hugging on the kitchen floor was tear-jerkingly poignant. Nathaniel Liodden, a 13-year-old singing student, led the production with an exceptionally mature performance as Kaden (his older digital avatar was performed separately by Ole Johannes Slåttebrekk and Silas Henriksen).

Another astonishing performance came from the scriptwriter, Andrew Wale, as the elderly Ellen Kowalski whose past life is horrifically revealed in a spoof This Is Your Life episode; the walk-on guests including a man who callously recalls abusing her at a bus stop. The Professor (another excellent actor, Anton Skrzpiciel) is confronted by a group of angry young men accusing him of staring lasciviously at a boy’s legs. Later his niece (Emma Lloyd) arranges for him to be placed in a home without the lifeline of his books. Each character’s intimacy is accentuated by an onstage cameraman filming in real-time with huge facial close-ups projected onto the set.  

Punctuating the main narrative threads were brief cameos that exposed many of today’s big issues, such as gender identity and recognition including a scene involving a drag queen, Lilly Lasagne (Aarne Kristian Ruutu) teaching a class of infants; and in a #MeToo vignette where a middle-aged man in a bathrobe (Skrzpiciel) invites a young woman (Veronica Selivanova as Philomela II) into his hotel room against her wishes. This Goldstein-inspired scene was made more powerful by the role reversal in their voices. 

Nothing Personal has an elaborate stage design (by Åsmund Faeravaag) with different sets (Philomela’s kitchen or the Professor’s living room) emerging on platforms from beneath the stage, or from the flies (Kaden’s swing in the park, the stuff of his nightmares). One platform rises several metres with performers still on it, including Proietto in those gravity-defying heelless wedges (one suspects that the safety implications were considerable). And just when one thought that the intricacy of this staging could not get more complex, a two-storey reveal rises above the stage to show a surreal party in progress underneath a graveyard.

Death is a constant feature of the work, which ends in dozens of white crosses being planted onstage, two of which remain in place for the curtain call. One wonders about that significance. This courageous performance was an intensely personal experience that will stay with me for a very long time.