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Comfort Farm« is a serious tribute to the rural novels of Mary Webb. Volcano TC's violent, speedy deconstruction job reduces Ibsen's lines to robotic mantras ot emotional need; their manic gestures and facial contortions mock what they seem to think is hammy melodrama and laughably rigid dramaturgy. The purely verbal elements otthe piece are the least successful; merely repeating, bellowing and twisting key soundbites does nothing to illuminate Ibsen's significance or do justice to the devastating longinas of his protagonists. »When We Dead Awaken« collides with The Master Builder , shots go off, Little Eyolt's crutches bob on the pond and Fern Smith rushes round in a taffeta track girning maniacally. The physical work, as one would expect trom director Nigel Charnock, is quite stunning: the tour performers race around colliding with each other and the furniture seemingly at random but actually with the obsessive patterning and repetition ot an Ariston ad. Jane Arnfield, corrupted innocence in a childish frock, has an irritating habit of deliberately flicking up her skirt (we see almost as much ot her silky gusset as her face); but just when this starts to look exploitative, the girls get revenge with a hilarious, furtive dissection of their two male colleages Richard Ryder (sweats a lot, bit of a git) and Paul Davies (can sustain an erection tor hours thanks to his asthma puffer). Charnock gets a bashing, too, tor being misogynist 1 like this bit , confides Arnfield as Smith noisily demonstrates how female sexual fulfilment kills babies. All this psychosexual nonsense loses the plot somewhat but the troupe pull their finale right out of Henrik s box ot tricks, turning the light on the audience - and it s brilliant. ■ Time Out, Suzi Feay

naked on the table and another actress (Jane Arnfield) gives a running commentary. As Smith approaches her imaginary climax she throws the baby on the floor; and so on with tour more babies suffering the same fate. Cast member Paul Davies points out as the performance moves through extracts from the Norwegian dramatist and into an examination ot the sexual tensions ot the four performers, it hasn t got much to do with Ibsen. Well yes and no. The Volcano Theatre Company turns Ibsen on his head, the private passions and public pretences are on full display in a dazzling, athletic charge through the playwright. Actors leap or fall from tables and chairs with alacrity a passionate tango leaves an actor (Richard Ryder) stripped and an actress moves hysterically through the audience before shooting another member ot the cast. You never know when the next eruption is How to Live confronts the internal and external _ pressures of the human condition with a dynamism that leaves the audience breathless and speechless. This is high-octane drama. ■ South China Morning Post, 1 7. januar, 1 995.

ONE ERUPTION AFTER ANOTHER Think of Ibsen and you imagine the repressed tensions and desires of headstrong characters strait jacketed by the norms and conventions ot society. Now see How to Live, radical Ibsen (Ibsemties, they call it) supplied by the Volcano Theatre Company ot Swansea, Wales: a woman (Fern Smith) in the throes of a sexual climax, moving to a centre-stage table where a baby (actually a doll in this case) lies