Quartet / The Razor
CONCEPT AND DIRECTION / XAN COLMAN
Drawing room before the French Revolution.
Air raid shelter after Wold War III.
A collision of classical music and contemporary theatre
"eye-catchingly impressive" - Alison Croggon
"Colman's direction is alive to Mueller's poetry" - The Age
Heiner Müller’s ardently acclaimed and oft criticised Quartet (1981) is a refraction of Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangeureuses in contemplation on the end of humanity. Quartet revels in the decadence and degradation of Liaisons, taking both to dripping modernist heights, as Laclos’ two protagonists switch characters and sexes (enacting also the president’s wife and Merteuil’s virgin niece) in a roleplay of boundless fetish and the ruination of virtue. As these lines converge and intersect, two duos perform a double quartet: a rare performance of possibility and indulgence.
Heiner Müller’s Quartet (after Laclos Les Liaisons Dangereuses)
Annie Hsieh’s The Razor (after Haydn String Quartet in F min Op.55 No.2