Free Your Mind at Aviva Studios
THE world is in chaos, the Holy Land is in crisis, theatres across the country are being forced to close as crumbling concrete is found in their infrastructure.
How, then, will Manchester’s £240m cultural centre entertain us during this bedlam and ease our worried minds?
With the world premiere of Danny Boyle’s Free Your Mind, a hip-hop dance promenade version of the iconic film The Matrix, obviously.
We are living in a simulation, but not in the way you might think. In his Republic, Plato suggests that something can be tangible and unreal, if it purports to be something it is not (as, for example, a statue does).
Sometimes you have to let go of clarity.
Actually, if you were suspicious of all this new technology, The Matrix served as a cautionary tale about our devices overpowering our lives.
Anyway, in June, the Manchester venue was renamed after the insurance company who – amid soaring construction costs – bought the naming rights for £35 million.
At 13,350 square metres in size, the building has massive, flexible spaces that can be configured by moving walls to fit any size of performance. Impressive.
Boyle’s Matrix collaboration with hip-hop dance company Boy Blue, designer Es Devlin and writer Sabrina Mahfouz is certainly impressive.
Sure, it’s prescient; all of us consumers placidly sucking up the trance-inducing pap from the corporate-political complex of the state.
“Should we be worried that machines could think?” asks a spooky avatar of mathematician Alan Turing, that visual effects company Union VFX created from a photograph. But never once does any of it feel felt or earned; it’s all surface and no depth, a marketing person’s fantasy, not an authentic work.
During the interval volunteer (we’ll come back to these later) white rabbit-headed figures danced with the 1,600 audience members. Warehouse workers marshal us. It’s as much a part of the storytelling as safety measures, I think.
Part two, in the Warehouse, is more startling, with Devlin’s set guiding us through the occasion. London Fashion week on acid. We stand by an enormous catwalk. Narrow screens slide above our heads with a montage of Manchester’s history —millworkers, soaps, references to Joy Division — it becomes overwhelming. Keep your nerve.
Throughout, it looks spectacular. Boyle et al conjure scene after striking scene, their cast serve this material superbly, with miracles of poise and expertise. Their movement becomes part of the disturbing current of the evening.
Most effective, however, is the use of sound and music. Washed along on the surges and throbs of Sandy and composer Michael “Mikey J” Asante, pounding score allows ensemble members to hold our attention with their physicality. They are creators of distilled moments, all of which remorselessly powers the action along.
All the dancers (50, with 28 recruited from in and around Manchester) perform with precision and significant style. They outshine the flashy pyrotechnics, but even they can’t bring this concept to proper life. Yet Boyle is an astute man of the culture, and the second half becomes mesmerising as he starts to utilise the awesome scale of the Warehouse, this space is his canvas.
The grit in this oyster, however, is on the back page of the programme: “This group of Manchester residents have been an integral part of ‘Free Your Mind’, and we thank them for their time, effort, and creativity.’
Goodness me, no.
This flies in the face of the show’s commentary on modern capitalism: a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Sort it out, please, John McGrath.
Aviva Studios – four years late and costing more than double the original budget – can crow all it likes in public, then, about the 230,000 people that have already visited the venue since it opened in Summer 2023 — but if truly wants to ‘inspire creativity’ and ‘nurture careers in the arts’ then it should be paying people for their work. They are people who are providing the value so why are they at the bottom of the heap when it comes to getting paid?
The Wachowskis’ 1999 film anticipated – and changed – the contemporary world that we’re trapped in today. And now these are some of the worst of times – but they are also a perfect time for cultural organisations and, indeed, all of us to at least attempt to be better and more fairer, equitable versions of ourselves.
- At Aviva Studios, Manchester, until 5 November
