You’d think it would be cool to be a God: Rock God, Love God, Sex God and even Domestic Goddess all sound cooler than ‘Data Input Manager’. If it’s cool to be a God then how much cooler must it be to be the Great God Pan: God of, among many other things, bees and unbridled lust? Not that cool is the conclusion you will come to if you see Panic by Improbable in the Pit Theatre at the Barbican. Improbable’s 100 minute kaleidoscope of stories and scenes is inspired by Pan’s often luckless almost Benny Hill style pursuit of nymphs. Pan, it transpires, is as fallible and flawed as any mere mortal.
I did not know that the word ‘panic’ is derived from a state of anxiety caused in herds of animals or crowds of people that the Greeks attributed to the influence or presence of the God Pan. I would hazard a guess there’s not a person alive who isn’t anxious about something (credit crunch? swine fever? motorcycles in bus lanes?). All that angst makes Pan a pretty powerful part-man, part-goat God who may or may not have died around the same time as Christ; just in time for another mischievous character with horns and a tail to make his bow….Improbable explain it all in a much more entertaining way.
I had the misfortune and the good fortune to be sat in the midst of a group of boisterous 15 year old boys and their teacher when I went to see Panic. 15 year-old boys desperately want to be cool and are just as desperately unlikely to succeed – I speak from distant but painfully clear memory of greasy, leaky face and foghorn voice. No school trip to the theatre could be considered complete without loud rustling of sweet packets and juvenile heckling. Improbable’s Phelim McDermott and his three nymphs were totally unfazed by and even encouraging of such audience participation. In a remarkably short time, the boys were drawn into rapt attention to the performance and it became fascinating to watch their bemusement and amusement at McDermott’s decidedly uncool pot belly and giant, goaty phallus.
Improbable’s blend of devised tableaux, puppetry, lies and true stories is greatly enhanced by an excellent set, lighting and music. Swirling soundscapes are achieved in conjunction with clever projection and wire work. The nymphs are a little underused but that is no reflection upon Phelim McDermott’s versatile and engaging performance as a lusty, savage, powerful and sometimes pathetic God. The concrete grey mass of the Barbican could not be further from the forest glades that are Pan’s natural habitat but then panic is a state of mind.
