Theatre review: Maybe if you choreograph me, you will feel better - Glasgow CCA

AS PART of Behaviour, The Arches’ festival of live performance, London-based Lebanese performer Tania El Khoury’s inventive piece marries modern technology with the time-immemorial practice of female objectification and patriarchal control, hence the stipulation that her solitary audience member is a man.

Directed to an office at the top of the CCA building, rather like a sniper one is instructed to look out from a window, observe El Khoury on the street below and await recorded prompts over headphones to give her instructions.

Although there is broad scope for improvisation and mischief, I confess I found the sense of power – which her recorded script likens to playing a computer game – overwhelming, and generally stuck to the series of A or B options. For example, the controller is offered a choice of garbing El Khoury as a westernised Queen Rania of Jordan or Leila Khaled, “the poster girl of Palestinian militancy”, with the question of who is actually directing who by no means straightforward.

On a more simplistic level, the experience is appealing to more playful, base and sadistic impulses, such as instructing her to feign crying and observing the reactions of passers-by – surprisingly indifferent, as it turned out.

With more sophisticated equipment, the communication process could feel more organic and spontaneous, and the gender politics are often unsubtle. But there’s no escaping the work’s visceral, even kinky, thrill

Rating: ***