Skip to main content

887

Edinburgh International Conference Centre
Five stars

The last time Quebecois theatrical powerhouse Robert Lepage came to Edinburgh two decades ago, his mesmeric mix of hi-tech visual poetry and story-telling was stopped in its tracks by technical hitches. As his astonishing overdue return makes clear in this European premiere by Lepage's Ex Machina company, technology has finally caught up with this ingenious renaissance man who has long been ahead of his time.

The past isn't always what it seems, however, as Lepage begins his two and a bit hours onstage with an anecdote about how the onset of iPhone culture has left him barely able to remember his own number, yet he is still able to recall events in his childhood growing up in Quebec City almost half a century ago. The catalyst for this was being asked to recite a poem to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of seismic events in Quebec's volatile Francophone history that provoked an angry plea for self-determination.

From this we're led by Lepage into his boyhood apartment block, onto the streets of Quebec, and into his latter-day home where he oversees his impressions of his personal history while coming to terms with the collective legacy of a nation in search of itself. Using a dazzling array of models and projections set up on a TARDIS-like revolving construction, what evolves is part auto-biography, part elegy for a mythologised collective past, and part call to arms. Lepage both preserves that past that defined him, and, in a world where no-one with a taxi driver father like him is able to study theatre anymore, pleas for change in this most quietly revolutionary and beguiling of experiences.

The Herald, August 14th 2015

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...

Andrew Midgley obituary

Born October 26th 1965 Died October 28th 2010 Andrew Midgley, who has died of a heart attack during a session in a Musselburgh gym aged forty-five, didn’t look like a pop star. Neither did this most garrulously playful of raconteurs particularly enjoy talking about his brief time in the charts during the early 1990s. Yet, while there was far more to this most singular of autodidacts, as one half of club-dance duo Cola Boy, Midgley caught the pop-rave zeitgeist with appearances on Top of the Pops performing the band’s infectiously catchy top ten hit, Seven Ways To Love. Even here, however, just as he would later apply diligence and care behind the scenes as a sub-editor on the Edinburgh Evening News, creating two of the funniest websites on the planet or managing an award-winning comedian, the man nicknamed ‘Boy Naughty’ preferred to stay in the background, allowing former Wham! backing singer turned Radio Two DJ Janey Lee Grace to bask in the day-glo spotlight of the period. Mid...