Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre 4 stars Don’t be fooled by the first half of the title of Christoph Marthaler’s musical and physical romp for Theatre Basel. Marthaler’s audacious production may give a nod to Lerner and Loewe’s showbiz reinvention of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, but it too is a Frankenstein’s monster of a mash-up, with sources as diverse as Ravel, George Michael and Bryan Adams to give its characters voice. One shouldn’t look too hard for plot either among the 1970s retro geek-chic attired adult pupils of a language lab overseen by a dapper if increasingly drunk Henry Higgins type who oversees his charges with flamboyant disdain. As the shopping channel plays out on a flat-screen TV in the corner above a row of booths, words become increasingly meaningless as each pupil’s inner life blossoms through the international language of song. At times this resembles the sort of old-time Christmas variety shows that the likes of Glee have lampooned so well. At others it’s as verbally dextrous as a Two Ronnies sketch, with Graham F Valentine’s Higgins figure and his aging Eliza trapped in endless exchanges from years ago which are now the only words keeping them together. Meanwhile, the rest of the group take time out from a religious therapy session to sing solitary arias to invisible audiences. Such shenanigans are accompanied on Anna Viebrock’s ingeniously bright set that’s fit for a farce by a virtuoso pianist and an organist actually dressed as Frankenstein’s monster. Out of all of this, Marthaler has created a terribly witty melange that speaks volumes about how we communicate beyond words in the most playful manner imaginable. The Herald, August 15th 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
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