National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
Three stars
Given just how much we are living in an age of instant archiving via
Instagram, Tumblr and whatever other social media app may have just
gone live, Adrian Osmond's play about one man's rummaging through the
emotional totems that shaped him is a particularly timely piece of
work. As performed by Lung Ha's inclusive ensemble company in Maria
Oller's site-specific tour around a building that holds a vast store of
archival material that gives a hungry public several keys to the past.
As John Edgar's ageing Peter goes through boxes with mobile phone
wielding Sally to conjure up his past while a distracted Bridget loses
sight of her little girl elsewhere, this is an infinitely more personal
display than anything held off-limits in glass cases. This is something
the bumptious Professor Stone's lecture on 'Thing Theory' makes clear.
With Peter's younger self reappearing to attempt to woo his dream girl
Alice, sense memories are made flesh in a play about loves clung onto
and children lost that's as elegiac as anything by Stephen Poliakoff. A
modernist music score by Kenneth Dempster played by a live quintet adds
to the mood.
If the venue's acoustics aren't always friendly to Oller's production –
and questions remain about why no regular Edinburgh theatre seems
prepared to house Lung Ha's work - its dramatic and philosophical
ambitions make up for this. With the company's increasingly
well-drilled performers relaying Osmond's script with sensitivity and
grace, Lung Ha's have created a show that attempts to go beyond
nostalgia to capture an idea of how the collective past is about much,
much more than official history.
The Herald, March 14th 2014
ends
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