Café Antarsia Review - 23/05/08

Stories sung, wonders performed.

Café Antersia Ensemble performed a beautifully rendered piece of storytelling as part of The Accidental Festival 2008. Taking folk traditions from America, Greece, the Balkans and the Middle East and infusing them with performance gentle, intricate and intriguing, this understated show enthralled.

            The depth of tradition was palpable. Singing folk songs which feel Romanian, Greek or Balkan in English is a bold move, the closeness of meaning is somehow uncomfortable, but here it worked. Part opera, part folk concert, part performance art piece, this show kept us watching, kept us believing. The honesty of the stories ensured we stayed with the performance, stayed with the songs, and believed in their relevance.

            Ruth Margraff's playful innocence and joy in her toned and measured performance: throwing carelessly (and yet so very considered) peacock featured masks to the ground; more peacock features in a fan, fluted and gentle. Painting a child's painting with brushes dipped in beer, this subtly self-aware performance, innocent and shy in its own ways, really brought a whole new texture to this piece.

            One felt the need to be sat at a table in a country kitchen, or a darkened snug in some stonewalled pub in a blackness of a late summer's evening. Folk music's power to cross national and linguistic borders is well known, and the universality of this music and its setting was wonderful.

Nickos Brisco's compositions fused the Southern drawl of Americana, with the haunting rhythms of Greek and Balkan music. He spoke the language of folk in tones and textures. While sung in English (a strangely distancing language for folk music) the connectedness with an international aspect of the traveller meant that the tradition was upheld by this piece. As with the best of contemporary performance, this work worked from its tradition, while finding new articulations and ideas within it.

- James Grogan.