The children swing their legs on the chairs. The student delivers the presentation. The older woman stands with the gun. The young couple arrives at the house. The house is returning to nature. A movie is being made. The truth is being plundered. But the house is still lived in and the spirit to resist is strong.
Janet Adler and Margaret Gibb were conceptual artists working in New York at the end of the last century. They were described by art critic Dave Hickey as the ‘most ferociously uncompromising voice of their generation’. With Adler’s death in 2004, however, the compromise began. Adler & Gibb tells the story of a raid – on a house, a life, a reality and a legacy. The play takes Tim Crouch’s fascination with form and marries it to a thrilling story of misappropriation.
"When one has penetrated the formal barrier, one finds that Crouch is delivering some fascinating propositions: that all art is the product of a particular culture, that today we are more obsessed by the life than the work and that we fetishise anything related to the artist." - Guardian
"A thrilling experiment... This simple story gives Crouch the chance to joyfully satirise academic descriptions of artistic creativity, and to comment on how film-makers, art critics and biographers vampirise the lives of artists. But as well as laughing at the blood suckers who slurp the life out of creativity, Crouch also explores the nature of theatre, and theatrical representation." - Arts Desk
"It's ambitious, both theatrically and intellectually, but what these theatre-makers are adept at doing is leaving room for concepts to circulate. The ambling setup of the first half might leave some fidgeting in their seats, but the slow delivery and long silences give priority to the play's groaning raft of ideas. Those ideas are swirling and slippery, taking up fluid residence in the mind. Adler & Gibb picks at notions of artistic value, of the relationship between art and meaning, of the relationship between art and life." - What's On Stage
"Crouch's distinctive, seriously mischievous fusing of formal experiment and ethical investigation is taken a stage further in Adler & Gibb... which plays pointed games with the rules of representation while skewering the monstrous presumption of wanting to invade and appropriate another person's reality... Not an easy show, but a memorable and rewarding one." - Independent
"Crouch has fun here at the expense of the various kinds of people who live off the creativity of others like parasites. He satirises the opaque judgments of scholars, the tedious ambivalence of critics and the mad devotion of fans... And as in his previous work, Crouch wants us to ask probing questions about the institutions (such as the Royal Court) where we experience art." - Evening Standard
Industry Reviews
...when one has penetrated the formal barrier, one finds that Crouch is delivering some fascinating propositions: that all art is the product of a particular culture, that today we are more obsessed by the life than the work and that we fetishise anything related to the artist. * Guardian *
...a thrilling experiment... This simple story gives Crouch the chance to joyfully satirise academic descriptions of artistic creativity, and to comment on how film-makers, art critics and biographers vampirise the lives of artists. But as well as laughing at the blood suckers who slurp the life out of creativity, Crouch also explores the nature of theatre, and theatrical representation. * Aleks Sierz, Arts Desk *
It's ambitious, both theatrically and intellectually, but what these theatre-makers are adept at doing is leaving room for concepts to circulate. The ambling setup of the first half might leave some fidgeting in their seats, but the slow delivery and long silences give priority to the play's groaning raft of ideas. Those ideas are swirling and slippery, taking up fluid residence in the mind. Adler & Gibb picks at notions of artistic value, of the relationship between art and meaning, of the relationship between art and life. * What's On Stage *
Crouch's distinctive, seriously mischievous fusing of formal experiment and ethical investigation is taken a stage further in Adler & Gibb... which plays pointed games with the rules of representation while skewering the monstrous presumption of wanting to invade and appropriate another person's reality... Not an easy show, but a memorable and rewarding one. * Independent *
Crouch has fun here at the expense of the various kinds of people who live off the creativity of others like parasites. He satirises the opaque judgments of scholars, the tedious ambivalence of critics and the mad devotion of fans... And as in his previous work, Crouch wants us to ask probing questions about the institutions (such as the Royal Court) where we experience art. * Evening Standard *
