We Keep Coming Back: Poland has a cold
18 Nov 2018

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Jeremy Mimnagh

Great art can occur when an intensely personal experience is expressed in a way that makes it universal. Shared and applied to the audience's own frame of reference. We Keep Coming Back deals with some heavy material - mainly the Holocaust, questions of identity and familial duty - but alas never frames it theatrically in a way that lets the audience in. The major theme that emerges is that trying to force events into a narrative only makes one miss the experience as it happens.

We Keep Coming Back reminds one of Gay Talese's famous non-interview for Esquire, "Frank Sinatra has a cold." When Sinatra kept cancelling appointments, Talese wrote about the experience of being in Vegas and failing to get the interview he was contracted for. And somehow turned it into an actual portrait of an aspect of Sinatra. Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah Garton Stanley and Rubenfeld's mother Mary Berchard set off to Poland to specifically create a theatre piece about their experience. It may have coloured their judgement - Rubenfeld does admit to one faked bit of footage - as creating theatre can be a compelling story but not when that is the sole aim. The portrait is not complete but we are urged to admire the artistry that went into creating it.

The credited creators Rubenfeld and Stanley, do have a secret weapon in Berchard who is no-nonsense and very deft with a quip. Unfortunately her timing is occasionally a beat behind and emphasizes the central problem with We Keep Coming Back. It is either carefully contrived to appear as off-the-cuff and semi-improvised, or it is just casually under-rehearsed. Considering the considerable co-ordinated video and projection work (with the assistance of Adam Barrett), I suspect the latter. As a lecture We Keep Coming Back works wonderfully, as theatre it is questionable.

Katka Reszke, who was their liaison in Poland, is comfortable on stage and tells her portion of the story with humour and cool élan. She is also the protagonist who calls out Rubenfeld when his obsession with creating theatrical moments overwhelms the actual experience and threatens all their relationships. And that shifts We Keep Coming Back, briefly, into much more interesting territory. Rubenfeld seems to have had a transformative experience but he breaks the rule of showing instead of telling. By the fourth or fifth time he tells the audience that it was a "powerful" or "thrilling" moment, we would much rather have been invited in to experience it ourselves.

Rubenfeld can be a charming presence and his interactions with his mother have a sweet appeal. However the audience participation is, despite the candy, excruciating and the final effect is of a satire of a theatre creator's ego run amok. However I must note that this is only my opinion, during the question and answer that followed, a few people expressed that they had been very moved and that the production "resonated." Note also that it was opening night and the audience was stacked with theatre people and friends, to whom the line between expressive theatre and self-indulgence may be less blurred.