ABSTRACT
Frantic’s first professional production, Look Back in Anger, borrowed much from Volcano Theatre. It deconstructed an existing, iconic and canonic text, introducing an explosive, sweaty physicality of leaps, sprints and rolls. And it sought to reposition and reignite this tale, nearly half a century old at that time, for a current, younger generation who were not necessarily regular theatre-goers. The ‘Headwrecker’ sequence is also indicative of the way that Steel’s work with the company sought to temper the ‘aesthetic of sweat’ that Frantic had brought wholesale from Volcano and the contact work of V-TOL. The use of the knives and forks in Stockholm was a key choreographic image which served as a strong – and wordless – metaphor for the ebb and flow of control, violence and sexuality which underlies the whole of the piece.
