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| Edinburgh : A&E : Theatre: Reviews |
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Theatre listings > Domestic Affairs II
- Tour British Premiere. Plunging your audience into total darkness is an oddly effective way of grabbing its attention. There's definitely something eerie about sitting cheek by jowl with complete strangers in the absence of light. But it worked beautifully with the opening stages of this production, which saw a pair of silhouetted legs walking down a crackling gravel path on a cinema screen. Confused? So was I initially, but the feeling didn't last long. This show challenges our own set of expectations when we enter an auditorium - in fact, it positively flouts them. Sampled snippets of conversation set to ambient dance music provides a hypnotic soundtrack to the mesmerising visual extravaganza unfolding before us. The anonymous female character, Judith Nab*, skillfully positions her body in front of the light being shone on to the cinema screen to actually put herself inside the film itself. This blend of past recorded material and live interaction with it accurately conveys one of the main themes of this play, which is that the past never truly leaves us. The mysterious house, this haunting black figure scurries through, is full of memories that keep jumping out into the present. Theatre Espace, an Amsterdam-based company, are masters at creating intricate visual spectacles using film, projections, light, shadow, steam, puppets, props and music. At one point a large old fashioned bath floats out from the darkness and gently floats to the floor like a feather. This is followed by a bar of soap, which shoots up and down through invisible water to the frustration of a similarly invisible hand. It's an enchanting evening where steam trains loom out towards you and riotous fireworks explode in glorious colour. At one point a possessed puppet - which initially looks identical to the female character - appears from nowhere on stage before revering tenderly back into a lifeless state. A recorded voice tells us "things like that don't happen - she dreamed"
and who could argue with that, you may wonder? But in the theatre of our
own imaginations strange things do happen, whether we're sleeping or stuck
in a frightening solitary fantasy. Theatre listings >
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