. . . artist as prophet . . .
Theatrical premonitions >> Robert Lepage's eerily prophetic 9/11 parable Zulu Time. . .
The play is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Airports are temples to technology; they are also places of great solitude where millions of travelers pass through, but where all differences are erased.
To evoke this universe, Lepage (Zulu Time is actually a collective work) invited artists from Québec, France, and Austria to join him in creating a grandiose techno cabaret performance combining video, techno music, robotics, and electronics. Theatre goers sit on either side of the set - two parallel walkways that are raised and lowered from scene to scene.
Lepage didn't skimp on this production, which cost around $1 million. The results are remarkable: robot insects fly overhead, a cheesy techno Western is projected on a triple screen, and dancers tango upside down. Lepage has also succeeded in creating an atmosphere both poetic and despairing, where lonely and drunken women make love beneath the stroboscopes to lovers in harness descended from on high.
Zulu Time ends with a terrorist attack against a passenger jet, which is not the most convincing scene. [Arts and Entertainment/ Le Soleil - October 21, 1999 By Michel Dolbec]
