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Tunnel Visions
- Tour & World Premiere.
Director - Cathie Boyd.
Composer - Anthea Haddow.
Librettist - Adrain Osmond.
Set Designer & Visuals - Axel Morgenthal.
Lighting Designers - Nich Smith & Cathie Boyd
Costume Designer - Crawford Mackenzie.
Assistant Director & Projection Designer - Laura Villegas.
Company - Theatre Cryptic - Their Website.
Cast - here .
2003 Tour Dates and Times - here .
Venue Seen - Tron Theatre, Glasgow.
That Venues Dates for This Touring Production - 9 - 13 March
at 8pm.
Seen to review at Tron Theatre Glasgow on 10 March 2004.
Run Time - 1 hours with no Interval .
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Inventive, imaginative peice.
Tunnel Visions - Theatre Cryptic Production.
Foreground - Alan Oke (Tenor) as Homer Background - Steven Beard
as Langley.
© Renzo Mazzolini 2004.
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British TV recently has been full of people who haven't disposed of
anything and Presenters who bully them into throwing it all away. This
haunting production introduces us to the most famous Disposophobics -
The Collyer Brothers. Theatre Cryptic's Tunnel Visions take us into a
junk filled Harlem 12 roomed house filled with the scent of oranges, using
a pure voiced singer, an actor, a pianist, a violinist with visuals and
strongly evocative lighting,
Lesser companies would have lumbered performers and audience alike with
walls of newspapers and stuff. Langley Collyer stored the papers for his
increasingly crippled and blind brother Homer. Their residence was already
filled with their parents acquisitions as well as theirs. Things were
in plural from walking sticks and sabres to stethoscopes (their father
was a gynecologist), parts of horse carriages and 14 pianos (their mother
and Langley were musicians).
Alan Oke's Homer is a mesmeric and a moving aural presence as he
moves his wheelchair and eats the oranges inventor Langley thought would
bring back his brother's sight. Anthea Haddow's composition and Adrian
Osmonds' libretto meld and form a piecing almost angelic experience. Also
convincing and adding to the production's feel is Steven Beard's squeaky
sneakered, moving like a man out of kilter with real life, Langley. He
talks to himself, to us, to his brother, his dislocation troubles as his
charm disarms.
The walls of junk are suggested by tiltable translucent screens moved
by the self misled Langley. On them and on the long rectangular screen
that hangs above the stage images and film are projected of heaps and
piles of possessions. The camera is moved through like exploring an universe
where every thing and direction is not as it seems. The fractured nature
of their lives is echoed in the red laser lights that criss-cross the
black stage, those patterns are also designed into the casts' and musicians'
light reflecting costumes.
The play comes to a intensely spiritual climax, as the tightly incarcerated
Homer still sings and then resolves into a coda. Director
Cathie Boyd and her team have created an inventive, imaginative piece
stuffed full of riches, not junk.
© Thelma Good 10 March 2004. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast: Langley - Steven Bread and Homer - Alan
Oke.
Musicians: Violin - Steve Morris and Piano - Robert Melling.
2004 Tour Details of Theatre Cryptic's production
of Tunnel Visions .
Tour begins
9 - 13 March
at 8pm Glasgow Tron Theatre www.tron.co.uk 0141 552 1404.
16 March at 8pm St Andrews The Byre Theatre, www.byretheatre.com
01334 475000.
18 & 19 March at 7:30pm Aberdeen The Lemon Tree www.lemontree.org
01224 642230.
25 and 26 March at 8pm Edinburgh The Traverse Theatre www.traverse.co.uk
0141 552 1404.
Tour Ends.
Tour ends
Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is
thelma@edinburghguide.com
Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted
for any errors or omissions.
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