I’m sure I write a variation on this same introduction pretty much every Fringe, but there can be no theatre company in the world more bewilderingly mercurial than Belgian legends Ontroerend Goed, whose formally experimental shows run the gamut from flagrant audience trolling to some of the most beautiful theatre I’ve ever seen.
Not that it’s as simple as that: many of their works start off looking like they’re in camp A before sneaking up on you and revealing themself to be firmly in camp B.
‘Funeral’ never feels like it’s trying to wind you up, but it’s nonetheless almost impossible to work out its intentions or specific direction of travel early on, when we’re gathered in the entrance to ZOO Southside and schooled in singing a song of mourning in what turns out to be Esperanto.
I don’t feel like I can reasonably go into the specifics of what happens in Alexander Devriendt’s production after that (ie no spoilers). But essentially what the company has created is a funeral ritual. It’s clearly influenced by extant human death rites. But it has no direct relationship to any one religious or secular tradition: it’s made up, a work of theatre. And it’s incredibly moving. Okay, it is not necessarily particularly moving for maybe 50 minutes of its hour running time, but what comes before sets up the astonishing climax, where we’re required to take part in a small rite – with no specific guidance as to what it means – which in its way it feels far more meaningful than anything I’ve experienced in any of the real funerals I’ve attended.
Ontroerend Goed has made shows that deliberately tamper with audience emotions before, notable the semi-infamous dating-based show ‘Internal’. But where that was arch, ‘Funeral’ feels utterly sincere - an attempt to comprehend and channel the power of ritualised grief in a way that’s communal and secular and pure, to free it not only from religion but the idea that this sort of ceremony only has worth when tied to a specific death. Sure, it’s an art experiment. But it’s also utterly transcendent, a work of elegiac beauty, a mirror on our own loss.