The power of words drives BigMouth's tour de force

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      Come for the theatrical spectacle; leave with a new perspective on how words can warp and twist our world.

      In BigMouth, Belgian actor Valentijn Dhaenens captivates with nothing more than an array of microphones, a bare table, and an electronic looping device. But what makes his minimalistic production so effective is that he’s also working with 2,500 years’ worth of the finest speeches ever given, an oratorical treasure trove that enables him to embody some of the strongest and strangest characters in western civilization, from the martyred Martin Luther King to the Mephistophelean Joseph Goebbels.

      By all accounts, BigMouth is a tour de force of acting prowess. And although the work made its English-language debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012, its central conceit has preoccupied the 39-year-old Dhaenens for virtually the whole of his career.

      “I actually became fascinated, when I was 16 or something, with the power of words,” he says in a telephone interview from Toronto. “And that’s the most important thing about this show. It’s more than the content, for me: it’s about what we’re able to do as human beings when we really hold our faith. We can change the course of history if we’re at the right time and the right place and have the skill to use these words.”

      That skill, he concedes, can be used for evil as well as for good. “The first speech that I read that gave me the feeling that I could make this show was the ‘Total War’ speech by Joseph Goebbels at the end of the Second World War. He’s addressing the women of Germany, to get them involved in the war industry. You can still listen to this on YouTube, and he’s screaming and shouting all the time—‘Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?’—and this whole sports palace shouts back, like in a pop concert, almost.”

      BigMouth isn’t just about Dhaenens aping famous orators from the past, however. In it, he makes a variety of surprising links to advance his thesis that we are all subject to manipulation by language. Presenting the Goebbels speech, for instance, he intercuts the Nazi propaganda minister’s words with those of American war hero Gen. George Patton, preparing his troops just before the D-Day invasion that would eventually topple Goebbels and his ilk.

      “I noticed there were only three weeks between those speeches, when they were delivered,” Dhaenens explains. “And Gen. Patton speaks in very short, aggressive phrases to these 16-year-olds who had never fired a gun, who he knew would have to become like gods on D-Day and jump out of the boats and attack screaming, so he was trying to lift these boys up by using very aggressive language.

      “The difference is so beautiful between these very short, English, aggressive sentences, and these very long, complex German sentences from Goebbels,” he continues. “So what I do in the show is that I mix them up: I’ll do a few sentences of Goebbels and switch swiftly to Patton—and I’ve noticed that they both say the same thing. They’re both trying to persuade people to go to war, but they use very different techniques. That’s a good example of how the show was built.”

      Dhaenens adds that his own presentation is almost as much a concert as a play: he builds a percussive backdrop for some of his most impassioned speeches by banging out beats on his simple set, and occasionally bursts into song. But there’s a serious message beneath this entertaining gloss.

      “If there’s one thing political about it it’s the hope that when people see the show, the next time they have to vote they will be just a little bit more aware of how they are addressed by politicians,” he says. “Speeches are always about manipulation, and people love to be manipulated, in a way. We love to be seduced—and nothing has really changed in the way that we try to manipulate people or to address them. The ancient Greeks invented the speech, in my opinion, and we still use the same techniques.”

      BigMouth is at the York Theatre from Thursday (February 11) to February 21.

      Valentijn Dhaenens in BigMouth.
      Maya Wilsens

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