After a little prompting from the Gate Facebook group and mailing list, I dropped the theatre a quick email with my postal address. A week later, an envelope dropped onto my doormat. Inside was a Gate postcard and a red balloon.

As instructed by the postcard, I inflated the balloon, took a photo of it and emailed the photo back to the Gate. Within a few hours my balloon had joined a host of others in a Flickr stream. Then, on Wednesday 11th February, it went up on the wall in the theatre foyer, along with 130-odd others, in an exhibition the Gate are calling Up … Up … and A Play!

The foyer walls are newly occupied by large blackboards. One lists the names of everyone that contributed a photo; another shows the locations of contributors on simplified maps of London, England and the world; the others all bear neat arrangements of photos. The pictures that have travelled the furthest are framed and hung along the staircase. Gate balloons have reached as far afield as Paris, Spain, Finland, Australia and Alaska.

Taking part in the exhibition engenders a strange feeling of connectedness, something like the six degrees of separation theory. The people and places pictured have little visibly in common, in the same way as the pictures themselves vary widely in terms of subject matter and photographical skill. But they all have one obvious common factor – the presence in every photo of a red balloon, and each photographer’s connection (whatever that may be) to the Gate.

If you’re interested in viewing the exhibition, arrive early. The doors open at 6:30pm; at around 7:00 the foyer will start filling up with people waiting to see that evening’s show, and you’ll have to fight your way around the tiny space to take in all the material. Take your time on the stairs – the framed pictures all have attached labels that provide a little context.

As a birthday celebration, Up … Up … an A Play! steers clear of self-congratulation and instead acknowledges the people without whom a theatre cannot exist. The Gate are still sending out balloons, and plan to re-exhibit with additional photos at the end of the year, once again turning an appreciative spotlight on their loyal audience.

Matt Boothman's Contribution to the Gate Theatre's Up ... Up ... and A Play! Exhibition

Falk Richter’s play, translated by David Tushingham, is interesting in that it portrays the fall of a dystopia from the viewpoint of the conservative. The Woman (Geraldine Alexander) is desperate to protect the status quo and her privileges from her husband and son, whom she suspects of opening the gate at night to let in the baying masses. It’s through her quiet but persistent inquisitions that we are drip-fed details about the play’s brave new world.

Naomi Dawson’s minimalist set cages the family like zoo reptiles behind their panoramic windows, in a long, narrow room that gives Alexander maximum space to prowl and pace. She’s poised – a model suburban mother – yet restless, nervous, and her insecurities flow out steadily but unstoppably. The disturbing impression is that she’s borderline hysterical, but still keeps her voice down to thwart informing neighbours.

The irony is that she’s as dissatisfied as her menfolk, snookered between her aspirations, received opinion and reality. She worked hard to gain entry to the community; everyone outside is willing to risk life and limb to gain illicit entry to the community; therefore life in the community must be wonderful, and any thoughts she entertains to the contrary must be denied.

The Man (Jonathan Cullen) provides a reticent counterpoint to his wife’s stream of consciousness. When he eventually explains his disillusionment there’s a very subtly controlled quaver in his voice, revealing a deep-set melancholy behind the evasive façade. Physically, Cullen is miscast. He looks neither old nor weary enough to justify his character’s habit of catnapping through important exchanges.

As the Boy, James Lamb plays a textbook whiny teenager when the script calls for something more sinister. His mother professes more than once to be afraid of him, and Dawson has him in a hoodie, invoking a middle-class fear of rogue youths with knives and attitude. Yet on discovering the Woman has been snooping in his bedroom he is merely affronted, and under gentle questioning he pleads desperately for a reprieve.

With a sulk and a glower, Lamb could be the personification of everything the adults are hiding from, behind their panoramic window, high walls and gate. Instead he’s a product of his privileged upbringing, pampered and spoiled, and his ultimate act of dissidence becomes a petty rebellion.

State of Emergency is at the Gate Theatre until 13 December. Tickets £16 full price; £11 students, Equity members, over 60s, disabled or unwaged. Note that a limited number of pay-what-you-can tickets are available on the door on Monday nights; first come first served, one per person.

Photo top: Jonathan Cullen (as Man) and Geraldine Alexander (as Woman) in State of Emergency. Photograph by Manuel Harlan.

Photo bottom: Geraldine Alexander (as Woman) and Jonathan Cullen (as Man) in State of Emergency. Photograph by Manuel Harlan.

The selling point of the production is that it’s different every night. Major casting and directorial decisions are made at the last minute by drawing straws, or spinning the bottle, or are sealed in mysterious envelopes that flutter down from the flies. Some lines are improvised; others are read at random from scattered slips of paper. Ticking clocks, ringing bells and animal cries could be cues for the cast or red herrings for the audience. The six performers regularly exchange characters throughout; during the course of the evening it’s possible for one character to be played by every member of the cast, individually or even all at once.

As someone only vaguely familiar with Chekhov’s original text, I can’t say I found the play easy to follow. Certain important plot points are emphasised (the family’s father died a year ago; the sisters are consumed by the idea of Moscow), or at least, they were this time. But try and dig a coherent Three Sisters out of the marvellous shambles on stage and I imagine you’ll have a very frustrating evening.

When both plot and character are obscured or ignored in this way, all that remains is the raw emotional arc of the play. This is a text boiled down and reduced to the broadest of strokes. The sisters are full of hope and ambition; they’re disappointed when their dreams fail to materialise; disappointment turns to screeching, weeping frustration and finally to a kind of shellshocked acceptance. It may lack subtlety and subtext, but it speaks to an instinctive, reactionary level of emotion that naturalism’s pregnant pauses could never reach.

Whether or not this makes good theatre depends on what you want theatre to be. If you want realism, a portrait of life as it is, …Sisters is a catastrophe. If you think theatre should be political, it’s confused at best. If you want West End spectacle, keep to your West End comfort zone.

What makes …Sisters great theatre is its gleeful exploitation of theatre’s transience. While it’s debatable whether cinema and television are responsible for the continuing decline in theatregoing, Goode’s production reminds its audience what the stage offers that the silver screen can’t: a unique experience that can never be exactly repeated. Plays are born and die with the rise and fall of the curtain, and …Sisters pushes this to the extreme, offering every new audience an experience that has never been seen and will never be seen again.

Chris Goode's ...Sisters at the Gate Theatre. Photo by Simon Kane.