Image: The Wedding by Gecko.

I’m sitting in the dark, waiting for a child to be born.

It will happen very soon and, much like in real life, be just as unexpected and confusing. Echoes of childlike cries resound through the Barbican, coming first from my right, then frighteningly close behind me, making their way down toward the stage where the end of a slide protrudes onto a crash mat of stuffed teddy bears.

Out slides a man in simple undergarments, holding a teddy bear of his own. He’s greeted by a smartly official Norwegian woman who goes on to explain his role in life and provides him with a wedding dress which he swiftly puts on, discarding his teddy bear in the pile and retreating through a door after a crowd of cheering revellers, off to adulthood.

With little in the way of tangible narrative or dialogue, physical theatre company Gecko have achieved something that transcends traditional expectations, constantly shifting languages and settings, blurring gender norms along the way. As a company, Gecko are masters at plunging audiences into worlds just on the fringes of conspicuousness; like sand through fingertips, just as you’ve started to follow along, the action shifts and you’re on to the next narrative thread.

There are no thresholds here, no protagonists or traditional conclusions. This could be frustrating but, then again, when has life gone to perfectly scripted plan? After all, at its very core, The Wedding is about just that: life.

Another actor exits the slide, another wedding celebration, so far so cyclical. As the piece progresses however, so too does the underlying anxiety and desire to pause for a moment. Characters become increasingly agitated, pulled and pushed here and there in a stoic reflection of Capitalism that is uncomfortably familiar. One of the story threads follows the first man to be ‘born’ into this world as he struggles with the responsibilities of work and home life, the never-ending rat race that swallows him whole, almost drowning him completely as he contemplates a way out. His wife seems not to notice, consumed as she is by her own duties and compulsions.

As the title of the piece suggests, there is certainly a reading one could take of the parallels between the contract of a marriage and the obligations of society. Indeed, the programme describes the work as:

“..a dystopian world in which we are all brides, wedded to society.”

This is apt, not only for the ideas of responsibility (to the state/to a partner), but for the push and pull in everyday life, the giving and taking, the acute differences between having and holding. As the voiceover from the man above announces toward the end of the piece, “I want a divorce”, it's deliberately unclear as to whether he’s referring to his work or his wife. As metaphors go, it’s strong.

At one point a woman manages to leave the central stage area, seeming to break free before returning to pull her partner with her. Looking on from the outside at the swirling day to day life they were content with just moments before, until seeing beyond the veil as it were, echoes of Plato’s allegory of the cave are beautifully blended as the couple witness the sometime prison of their own making. After attempting - in a naturally futile way - to physically ‘return to the womb’ by climbing into the slide, they eventually decide to return to their previous lives, crossing back over into an office environment where they quickly become contented cogs back in the machine.

The stage undulates and goes dark, empty now save for a lone spotlight on an old travel case, from which a buoyantly happy beggar emerges, engaging in a comical aside with the audience in a mix of native Spanish and broken English. He produces a battered radio from the case, with which he performs a Chaplain-esque dance, the character portrayed beautifully by Mario Patrón who treads the line between pitiful and playful masterfully.

His family, evidentially living in the comically deep bag created with some expert stage trickery, emerge to pull him back from his carefree dreams to the harsh reality of life as a displaced product of migration. One must become a useful component in order to climb the social ladder, something the man quickly learns through endless battery in some form or another, either of his soul or at times his body as he is at one point mercilessly beaten by a violent man in a wedding dress, left for dead with no chance of help from the state he so tirelessly works for.

It is this juxtaposition between the tragedy of being human and the comfort of being among others, that makes Gecko’s work so profound to experience. It’s less important to understand the characters through narrative than it is to feel their struggle through their emotional outbursts.

In several scenes, the use of elasticated fabric, stretched to breaking point, is utilised to form physical barriers to overcome. A bridal dance set to the raucous clash of Balkan brass places one of the actors in the role of newlywed, four men following her movements with a white fabric square that occasionally engulfs her in an oppressive way: is she captor, or captive?

Later in the piece, amusingly small boxes, reminiscent of both opulent carriages and crowded phone booths, are squeezed into by businessmen, the comedy cut through with the man from earlier becoming claustrophobic, his inner voiceover announcing that he is “struggling to breathe” as he pushes through the fabric roof for a gasp of fresh air.

The Wedding is a triumph of movement and set design, expert choreography providing the undulating backbone of the piece, as dance, physical theatre and cultural exchange meld into a congealed artwork that’s greater than the sum of its parts. What Artistic Director Amit Lahav has achieved feels powerfully emotional and is incidentally difficult to talk about without lofty pretention. It is, after all, grandiose by design.

Leaving the theatre, the overall sense one is left with is of a beautiful dance of life about obligation, fragmented identity and the liminal, often dissociative spaces at the fringes of consciousness and social duty. At times, it powerfully evokes geopolitics and the battle cry of revolution against the backdrop of a global threat, lofty leaders left overthrown and beaten. It’s almost too prescient, too palpable to bear, and yet, there are real moments of joyous celebration too, a magnifying lens on the beauty of the everyday.

What we are left with is something incredibly moving and something deeply human.

Review by Ralph Barker.

Gecko's new show Kin will premiere at HOME Manchester 27 September 2022 to 1 October 2022 (tickets on sale 12.00am, 28 June 2022), before touring across autumn 2022 (dates to be announced). The show and company will then make their debut at the National Theatre in 2023. geckotheatre.com