Astronomical occurrences have always held a particular
fascination for humanity. One such example is the Transit of
Venus, when the planet can be seen to move across the sun. In
celebration of the first transit to occur in 122 years, which
coincides with opening night, the play seeks to examine the
scientific frenzy caused by the previous transit in 1874 as well
as the way in which it captured the popular imagination. The play itself is an interesting piece of abstract theatre.
It does not have a distinct plot but is created piecemeal from a
variety of first hand accounts about the transit, from newspaper
articles and scientific journals and concluding with a poem taken
from an 1874 issue of Punch. The play shows us the whole gamut of emotions that accompanied
the event, from the initial sense of opportunism and scientific
rivalry to feelings of triumphalism, recrimination and acrimony
afterwards. The production is especially skilled at the stylistic effects
of contrasting these seemingly overwrought accounts with a bare,
mechanical rendering of them on stage. In one scene, the actors
carry out automaton- like movements accompanied by the steady
beat of a metronome effectively bringing out the mechanical
exactitude of the scientific endeavour. Another interesting scene
has the cast repeating phrases from newspapers such as
‘fatal difficulty’, ‘twelve years of error’
in a canon effect, eventually descending into a monotonous
cacophony of voices. As conceptual theatre goes, it is an intriguing and well
thought out production.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004
The Transit of Venus
