FERN

Horse & Engine—The Rachel Browne Theatre

I really wanted to like this show. I have been an Ally for a long time and I want to do everything I can to be a supporter. Alas, I can’t say that I really get this performance. It’s a coming-of-age recount of a fern, its treatment (mistreatment) and the occurrences around it. Some of the metaphors are powerful but
some of them are a bit out of reach.

The dance has its moments but the most memorable segment involved the actors working themselves to exhaustion. It started off intriguing but then the repetition lost me. As far as I could count, there were eight moves that we repeated over and over again until the dancers were on the verge of collapse.
This was yesterday so my memory fades, but I remember a few of the moves that I named myself, in my head:

• The tug-of-war
• The wrestle grasp
• The push-off
• The shoulder-bump
• The butt-boost
• The push-aside, and
• The juke.

Does anyone know what the metaphors to this dance were? I’m very curious to know.

Ray Yuen