Play: Strategy for Two Hams, by Raymond Cousse
Theatre: Gasworks Theatre
Season: April 27 to May 15
Actor: Ian Scott
Translator: Katharine Sturak
Director: Jean-Pierre Mignon
Costumes: Louise McCarthy
Set: Fred Mechoui
Synopsis: a pig assesses his life - and, incidentally, the entire human condition.
Rating: *****
The complexity of our human condition has often been related through animals as a metaphor, and in the case of George Orwell's Animal Farm, for example, specifically via pigs.
But there is little in the pig pantheon of Western literature and theatre to compare with Raymond Cousse's viscerally satisfying odyssey through pig (human) life, Strategy for Two Hams.
The play is a one animal show, first performed by Anthill in 1982, but now revived with princely pigician, Ian Scott.
Scott spent several months with a pet pig to obtain a thorough grasp of hog antics. His performance, as a result, is studded with a wealth of piggly bits, a rich complement of swine snorts, gaits and gesticulations.
But the real genius of this portrayal, by turns both subtle and boldly imaginative, is the way Scott, developed by director Jean-Pierre Mignon, captures the play's deep reaching political and psychological undertows.
No one's gumboots will be unmuddied by the end. Our tendency to get mired in habits, the ironies of political agitation (both left and right), and the nature of exploitation, are just some of the themes shooting through the pig's hour and a half, pre-slaughter monologue.
Playwright Cousse, who committed suicide in 1991, injects his play with a keen sense of the perverse, absurd and macabre (he performed it himself in 50 productions world-wide).
But there is also a misanthropy studded through the humor - and savage satire of our politics and culture. Scott has the intellectual rigor and consummate stagecraft to seize such opportunities.
And the intellectual nourishment you will derive is enhanced further by nifty costumes and set (although the gory bits are abstracted rather than literal which may slightly disappoint those seeking to wallow in butchery).
In short, this Anthill production is first-class and a must see.