The first major show in this year’s Edinburgh International Festival marks the UK debut of Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy, in a French language production that premiered at the Avignon Festival a couple of years ago.
‘Dusk’ is a peculiarly high concept affair that sees the majority of the cast introduce themselves to us and declare that they are attempting to stage a version of Lars von Trier’s provocative 2003 screen classic ‘Dogville’ to see if they can effect a different ending.
They play the inhabitants of the small town in which the story takes place - now we just need an outsider: Julia Bernat’s Graça, who begins the play sat in the audience and then ‘volunteers’ to join the theatrical experiment.
For a long time it is essentially a fairly faithful stage version of ‘Dogville’, which was itself famously shot and filmed on a stage with minimal props. We follow Graça’s initial happy integration into the town, following which the town gradually turns on her as it becomes apparent that she’s on the run from somebody. We are wowed by the mise-en-scène: by careful positioning and choreography and trading of the camera between actors, the main action is deftly relayed via live video to the big screen that dominates the stage.
But it takes some time to see the exact point, or at least the point of not just calling it ‘Dogville’ (the original French name is ‘Entre Chien et Loup’, a term for dusk that resonates rather better with the title of the film).
When a young boy named Achille appears as a character, he is a recording only. A pragmatic way to avoid needing a child actor, but his appearance sparks the first of a series of fascinating divergences in the timeline. The ‘live’ Graça refuses to spank him when he tries to coerce her into it; a deviation from Von Trier’s story. She then escapes a rape attempt that is successful in the film. As the original story gets darker, the stage version of Graça escapes the worst of the indignities inflicted upon her screen counterpart (both the pre-recorded Bernat, and Nicole Kidman in the film), effectively creating two parallel versions of events.
It is a dazzling piece of stagecraft, though ultimately the message of it seemed a bit… gauche? ‘Dogville’ is a cynical film that suggests evil can emerge anywhere; ‘Dusk’ suggests a more positive ending is possible if we are vigilant. As presented here, it sort of hinges on the idea that perhaps things might have turned out better for everyone in the film if only Nicole Kidman’s character had not allowed herself to get sexually assaulted. I don’t think that’s actually what ‘Dusk’ is trying to literally say: it is an allegory for the rise of fascism, particularly with regards to the Bolsonaro regime in Jatahy’s home country. But for such a visually sophisticated show, its rhetoric comes across as clod hopping and simplistic, and never really feels like it matches the high concept of the setup.