Dundee Rep 4 stars There are explosions in Zinnie Harris's extraordinary play of communal displacement even before its strange, dreamily poetic exchanges between island folk forced from their isolated way of life take hold. In James Brining's lovingly nuanced revival, these come in the form of a stunning clash of sound and vision on stage filled with water that designer Neil Warmington, under the influence of visual artist and 'water consultant' Elizabeth Ogilvie, has reflected via a live video feed onto a huge screen behind. As a man slips into the water under the beatific glow of Philip Gladwell's lighting design, John Harris' monumental choral score is a shattering cry from the deep. If all this threatens to overwhelm the slow-burning quietude that follows, it also accentuates the physical and emotional dams waiting to burst open in an expansively symbolic production of a play loaded with significant portents of the tragedy that follows. As Mill and Bill await the return of their prodigal nephew Francis from the big city, the eggs they drop are mirrored later by the still-born pregnancy of Francis' lost sweetheart, Rebecca, as an apparently dormant volcano erupts beneath them. With factory owner Hansen providing work and shelter, the sense of exile that follows leaves the islanders more isolated than ever before, each on their own urban island as long-hidden secrets gush forth. Inspired by the real-life saga of Tristan da Cunha, the Atlantic island evacuated following a similar occurrence, a beautifully measured set of performances is led by Ann Louise Ross and as Mill as a heart-stopping portrait of a big society fractured by capitalism emerges from the deep. The Herald, April 30th 2012 ends
When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid
Comments