Carl Bland has another hit with Spirit House

Spirit House by Carl Bland
Directors Carl Bland & Ben Crowder
Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre
Until March 5

Carl Bland’s Te Po, which was one of the outstanding shows at last year’s Auckland Arts Festival was described by this reviewer as “consisting of playful inventiveness with word-play, intellectual jokes, audacious paradoxes, and self-conscious theatricality.”

Hus new play, Spirit House is somewhat of a companion piece but, where Te Po was incredibly clever, this play is more considered.

It is a multi-layered work about creativity and memory and uses all the magic of the theatre, weaving together several narrative plot lines combining realism, and illusion, drama and comedy.

We encounter two artists Charles and Steven who occupy the same studio in Nong Kai, Thailand. Ian Mune as Charles is a figurative painter in the 1920’s who has asked a young woman, Sonia (Mia Blake), to pose for him.

His work appears to have focused on painting the same female figure, her face unseen walking away from the viewer (and the artist). The rear of the set features a number of these paintings, which have been painted by Carl Bland. Charles has been searching physically, artistically and spiritually for the woman or at least his idea of the woman for most of his life.

Then there is Steven (Tim Carlsen) a 21st century conceptual artist who could be modelled on Billy Apple in his use of innovative ideas along with appropriated material. He may well be contemplating resurrecting Charles’ work in some postmodern reimagining. In the 21stcentury Sonia is his minder, gallerist and lover.

As with Te Po, the set, props, puppets, special effects and music become an integral part of the work providing a strong tangible quality to the work.

There is the pared back set by John Verryt, unobtrusive lighting by Rachel Marlow, a remarkable cat mask designed by Main Reactor and a soundscape by John Gibson. Pongsaporn Upani, the sole musician on stage plays a traditional instrument and chants traditional songs which help ground the play in Thailand as well as adding a sense of spirituality, connecting the two time periods the artists inhabit,  

Bland uses the two artists to meditate on the nature of art and artists, with both artists attempting to explore concepts around creativity, realism the nature of truth, life and death. How does the artist represent and reflect the worlds? Does the imagery come from the real world or filtered through the artist’s memory? Is painting a reflection of the artist’s desires or a quest for fame and meeting the needs of his audience.

The play uses what might be seen as clichés about the artist and the art world, Charles like Picasso and his models, while Steven has his van Gogh famous moment, but these various tropes allow the discussions to expand.

As Charles, who suffers from impotence, a fear of death and an obsession with the past, Ian Mune invests the artist with a tantalising mixture of arrogance and loneliness, an artist’s struggling with demons and the reality of making artworks. His robust delivery in his chalky voice sometimes seemed like a lecture and at other times like a reverie.

Tim Carlsen gives Steven a manic delivery, haunted by his own questioning of his art and obsessed by what critics and Sonia think about him and his art.

Mia Blake is remarkable as Sonia as she shrewdly changes her character from the one century to the other, with almost imperceptible mannerisms which convey two different people

Claude, the cat, is a slightly surreal addition to the cast who like Sonia inhabits both worlds. Played by Min Kim with a large beautifully made mask he performed with an edgy feline physicality and a sense of the inscrutable as well as an uneasy sense of menace.