The Briggait, Glasgow
3 stars
One night can change lives forever. Just ask Harun, the teenage hero of this inner-city site-specific fusion of theatre and music that forms the latest exploration of twenty-first century homegrown multi-culturalism from Ankur Arts. Or rather, ask Rhia, the girl played by Sharita Scott who can guess what’s going to happen before it does. She’d know. What neither Asif Khan’s Harun nor Rhia do know in this chronicle of a death foretold that takes in youth gang turf wars and under-the-radar club culture is exactly how Harun’s dad died.
Played across three different rooms in an ice-cold concrete block beyond the Briggait’s public façade, director Paddy Cunneen has mashed-up writer Davy Anderson’s
rough-hewn rhyming couplets with a mix of visual and sonic elements in a stab at a
strip-cartoon Glasgow-Indian urban noir pulsed along by a slow-bubbling mood-music soundtrack. Running parallel with this is the gig of all gigs by Bigg Taj’s human beat-boxer Ajay, who’s waiting for Nikitta Angus’s sweet soul singer Alicia to arrive before the show can begin. By the end of the night, Ajay will be making headlines of a different kind.
Acoustics aren’t always great, however, even as the chorus of seventeen members of the Ankur-related PANGAA Young Company who prowl around the bridge of Becky Minto’s expansive industrial set are given amplified voice from offstage. Kaleem Ahmad’s fast-talking DJ Vu provides further comment. Both Taj and Angus are in swoonsome voice, even if their presence isn’t fully assimilated into the main action from the off. If all the show’s different elements don’t always gel, however, Cunneen and co has nevertheless crafted an admirably bombast-free affair that’s not quite the sum of its parts.
The Herald, October 17th 2010
ends
3 stars
One night can change lives forever. Just ask Harun, the teenage hero of this inner-city site-specific fusion of theatre and music that forms the latest exploration of twenty-first century homegrown multi-culturalism from Ankur Arts. Or rather, ask Rhia, the girl played by Sharita Scott who can guess what’s going to happen before it does. She’d know. What neither Asif Khan’s Harun nor Rhia do know in this chronicle of a death foretold that takes in youth gang turf wars and under-the-radar club culture is exactly how Harun’s dad died.
Played across three different rooms in an ice-cold concrete block beyond the Briggait’s public façade, director Paddy Cunneen has mashed-up writer Davy Anderson’s
rough-hewn rhyming couplets with a mix of visual and sonic elements in a stab at a
strip-cartoon Glasgow-Indian urban noir pulsed along by a slow-bubbling mood-music soundtrack. Running parallel with this is the gig of all gigs by Bigg Taj’s human beat-boxer Ajay, who’s waiting for Nikitta Angus’s sweet soul singer Alicia to arrive before the show can begin. By the end of the night, Ajay will be making headlines of a different kind.
Acoustics aren’t always great, however, even as the chorus of seventeen members of the Ankur-related PANGAA Young Company who prowl around the bridge of Becky Minto’s expansive industrial set are given amplified voice from offstage. Kaleem Ahmad’s fast-talking DJ Vu provides further comment. Both Taj and Angus are in swoonsome voice, even if their presence isn’t fully assimilated into the main action from the off. If all the show’s different elements don’t always gel, however, Cunneen and co has nevertheless crafted an admirably bombast-free affair that’s not quite the sum of its parts.
The Herald, October 17th 2010
ends
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