SWG3, Glasgow
Four stars
It’s Friday night, five
minutes after the UK failed to leave the EU as planned. Onstage at the end of
the National Theatre of Scotland’s multi-artform compendium of short works intended
to mark the occasion, Angus Farquhar, late of 1980s percussive provocateurs Test
Dept and creators of monumental spectacle NVA is playing marimba with his
comrade Cameron Sinclair. This follows a moving personal testimony of what
Europe means to Farquhar in a piece called Second Citizen. Set to a techno beat,
Farquhar’s performance sees him getting back to his roots in every way.
Co-curated by NTS
artistic director Jackie Wylie and Stewart Laing of Untitled Projects, the
evening begins with compere Gary McNair asking why politicians can’t be like
artists and work to the deadline they’ve been given. This is an all too
pertinent gambit prior to opening act Tam Dean Burn appearing dressed as a pirate
for Aquaculture Flagshipwreck, a comic dissection of Scotland’s fishing
industry featuring harpist Rachel Newton, live painting projections by Tom
Morgan-Jones and an inflatable salmon.
Upstairs, Nic Green and
Ruairi O’Donnabhain’s d’tus maith is leath na h’oibre/a good start is half the
work is a movement-based duet, in which the performers use chairs split in two
to convey the the complexities of Ireland’s relationship with itself as much as
anywhere beyond.
Nima Sene and Daniel Hughes’ three-screen film, moving through shadows, juxtaposes the everyday experience of people of colour in Poland with the Polish community in Scotland. It finishes with a remarkable live appearance by Nigerian/Polish singer Ifi Ude.
Music is the night’s driving
force. Leonie Rae Gasson’s Death Becomes Us puts the audience in the dark with
blindfolds and headphones for a soundscape by Susan Bear before blinking into
the light of a celestial performance by Beldina Odenyo Onassis, aka Heir of the
Cursed. She is joined by a regimented choir of migrant women, who march through
the aisles, owning the space to subvert perceived notions of control.
Music is there too in Cadaver
Police in Quest of Aquatraz Exit, Alan McKendrick’s piece of agit-prop punk
dystopia, in which a near-future band turn jailbreak revolutionaries. As with
Farquhar’s piece, all this suggests a quasi-secret republic dancing through
dark times to take on the world.
The Herald, April 1st 2019
ends
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