The Manchester International festival is nothing if not daring. As proof, it kicks off its theatrical programme with Robert Wilson's visualisation of a surreal novella written in 1939 by the Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms. It is performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe with superb finesse, and looks astonishing – yet, nearing the end of its 90 minutes, I found myself glancing furtively at my watch.
Kharms's story, adapted by Darryl Pinckney, takes us into the imagination of a writer who is haunted by the figure of an old woman, fantasises about killing her yet can never escape her presence. It's a startling fragment with echoes of Dostoyevsky, intimations of Ionesco and subversive hints that the old woman may symbolise the all-powerful Soviet state. But what we get in Wilson's production is a series of tableaux vivants framed by madcap vaudeville routines. Baryshnikov and Dafoe, with clown-white faces and skewiff hair, start by doing traditional front-cloth comedy before moving into the shifting personae of Kharms's story. Baryshnikov, bulkily graceful, at one point memorably places his hands on the back of his swaying hips to evoke a girl the writer picks up in a bakery. Dafoe is just as expressively physical, but also conveys the angst of a writer trapped in a living nightmare.
At first the show is enormously seductive. Hal Willner's eclectic score includes revivalist hymns and faintly blowsy dance tunes. Wilson also turns each of the 12 scenes into beautifully lit art installations: chairs and windows float in space like Alexander Calder mobiles; horizontal strip-lights evoke the motion of a train. Yet, although the image of two clown-figures caught in a senseless world may suggest Waiting for Godot, Beckett's play had an emotional dynamic and rigorous symmetry that is signally lacking here. Wilson's production is the embodiment of international chic and something of a collector's item, but also proves that any act of theatre needs narrative momentum.
