Paisley
Arts Centre
Three
Stars
The
glass is neither half empty nor half full for the lonesome troubadour and
one-man band at the centre of Norwegian writer Jon Fosse's monologue, performed
by Renee Williams with the sort of hangdog sense of under- achievement that
could have stepped in from the after-hours sidewalk of a mid 1970s Tom Waits
sob story.
With
only a guitar case and a pocket full of loose change to call his own, Fosse's
creation charts the loneliness of the long-distance busker, whose everyday
form of street- smart musical panhandling never quite solicits the pot of gold
his younger self probably aimed for at the end of the now faded rainbow he can no
longer be bothered chasing.
What
emerges in Fosse's tale of ordinary madness is the result of what happens when
everything that once defined you lets you down. The Guitar Man's particular
slide into self-negation begins in the clutter of Sarah Beaton's set with the
snapping of a guitar string. The musical fragments that follow are provided by
composer Hanna Tuulikki, as Williams attacks her guitar with the freeform zeal
of an anti-folk auteur deconstructing wildly at some underground open-mic
night.
The
last time Fosse's work was seen in these parts was probably by way of David
Harrower's translation of The Girl on the Sofa, a similarly intimate close-up
of fractured lives. This was seen at the 2002 Edinburgh International Festival
in a production by Thomas Ostermeier for Berlin's Schaubuhne Theatre. The
Guitar Man preceded that play, although Nora Wardell's production for her new
Surrogate company in association with Glasgow's Platform venue seems to have
blown in from the same lonely street it occupied.
All
the big existential questions are intact in Louis Muinzer's translation, as The
Guitar Man comes in from the cold to tell his story of lost love, broken
families and an increasingly discordant music that's slowly fading away. Like
him, Surrogate’s production moves on to several towns until the end of the
month.
The Herald, May 2nd 2019
ends
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