Jet of Blood

> The Garage, Norwich

It's rare to see one of Artaud's plays performed.

It seems incredible that this revolutionary French genius, whose ideas have shot down through the last 70-odd years and influenced so much of the way theatre and film are created today (think everything from De La Guarda to Reservoir Dogs) should have committed so little of his actual

performance work to paper.

One of the few existing scripts, however, is a four-page epic called Jet of Blood.

There's no real story and not much in the way of words, just a series of primal states: love, sex, death.

And this anti-rational structure, along with various noisy and nasty theatrical techniques, is intended to liberate your subconscious.

There is a linking theme, mind you: predictable, perhaps, for a play written in Paris between the wars: God has deserted us and the world is a violent and shocking place.

Christina Poulton and Sean Garratt's Visceral Theatre production has a distinctly French feel to it, from the white panstick on the faces to the superbly frumpy '40s costumes, to the slapstick puppetry in the movement.

But the sense of despair and mutual hatred was bang up to date and all too close to home: David Gibson's throbbing club soundtrack was full of the familiar sounds of modern nihilism.

An unusual play, which is well worth a look, as long as you're not too squeamish.