It opens, like an episode of The Archers, on a pig farm in the west country: A bullying, alcoholic father, a mother, a son and a pregnant daughter-in-law are in dire financial straits. The farm is failing but it is all they have, and the pressure of keeping it in the family fuels conflict. Soon, though, events take a supernatural turn. The land itself seems to turn against them and, in a curious twist, the father of the family transforms into a pig.
Such is the surreal world of PIGSPIGSPIGS, the latest music theatre work from the composer-performer collective Bastard Assignments, which receives its UK premiere next week. Is it meant to be funny? “I quite enjoy that knife edge between horror and comedy,” says one of the group’s members Edward Henderson. “When we first performed it in Norway, there was a kind or pressurised laughter from the audience, as though they were wondering if they should laugh or not.” He does an impression of someone guffawing despite their own better judgment. “I love that as a reaction.”
By now Henderson and his colleagues – Timothy Cape, Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear – are very comfortable with their transgressive side. They have, after all, spent the last 15 years scuttling between unusual southeast London venues, straddling the divide between experimental music and absurdist theatre. All of their discombobulating projects are wildly different, but the aim has been more or less consistent: to create a DIY, underground scene far removed from the formality of the traditional concert hall.
So it is striking that PIGSPIGSPIGS takes place – not in a tunnel shaft or a bombed-out Peckham chapel – but in the velvet-seated surroundings of Wigmore Hall, whose 125th anniversary it was co-commissioned for. “If you’d asked me five years ago, “Do you think Bastard Assignments will ever play Wigmore Hall? I’d have said “No way,” says Henderson. What changed then? “Obviously Wigmore is trying to get younger people in; they’re interested in in new types of performances and artists.”
He admits that there were practical issues to consider, not least the fact that Wigmore Hall isn’t even a theatre. “They don’t have curtains; the stage is small and a funny shape. So we did wonder how we were going to do a theatre piece there.” The group’s solution was to build the piece entirely around the venue. “Rather than working around the limitations, we asked ourselves ‘what if this was exactly what we wanted?’ So we taped out the shape of Wigmore Hall to try to get a sense of what kind of piece would work on this kind of stage.”
Wigmore is like a posh village hall
Edward Henderson
The result is something that feels quite “domestic”, as Caitlin Rowley puts it, built from light touch materials that the performers could hold and wear. Amplified twigs, cooking pans, hoses and copper pipes function as musical instruments in a score that draws upon English folk traditions. The quartet of performers moves fluidly between acting, singing original folk songs and hymns and playing their “scrap-heap” orchestra. Even the costumes are designed with maximum efficiency in mind, with one enormous piece of fabric morphing from a chorus robe and a dress into a tablecloth and, ultimately, a prop for a country dance. “We’ve tried to create something that you could do in a pub or a village hall,” explains Henderson. “And in terms of theatrical capacity, Wigmore is like a posh village hall.”
Still, Bastard Assignment’s is a very particular brand of theatricality – one that you tend to either love or hate. In Impossible Penetrations, a 2019 collaboration with the Danish-Brazilian composer Marcela Lucatelli, the four members of the collective engage in manic, ritualistic behaviours, such as filling their mouths with condiments until they are visibly gagging and drooling. For Fresh & Clean 3, the show they curated in 2016, guest artist Kajsa Magnarsson manipulated an electric guitar using a strap-on dildo. Can Wigmore Hall carry a flavour as pungent as theirs? “PIGSPIGSPIGS is quite accessible and I can imagine very legible for the Wigmore audience” says Josh Spear. “We guide the audience’s hands; it should draw you in and it’s fun. We have fun playing it and I think that helps.”
Moreover, adds Timothy Cape, there is a lot to take away from it, not least ideas about “shifts family dynamics and this alcoholic, abusive authority figure who is turned into a pathetic pig.” He continues: “It might make you think about the generational divide that is very much alive in British politics; the fact that the son wants to transform the farm into an eco-friendly environment with solar panels while the parents want to remain in the pig business could be read as [representing] the generational struggle in the wider political context of Brexit.”
Ultimately though, Bastard Assignments does not view their upcoming premiere as an exercise in shock tactics or as a political lecture, but as an opportunity to embrace the spirit of play in a hallowed environment: “The Wigmore Hall flavour is so strong, with the velvet seats and the huge bunches of flowers and the frieze. So you can’t fight it,” says Henderson. “There is no way we could say ‘Come on, guys, pretend with us that this is a black box theatre. So instead we’ll try and use the formality and pressures of the classical tradition to play with the audience’s expectations.” He sums up: “Ideally the result will feel exciting, and just a little bit naughty.”
PIGSPIGSPIGS receives its UK premiere at Wigmore Hall on Saturday, April 11. For more information, click here