James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet

Director Laura Kuhn
Co-Production between the Edinburgh International Festival, Cal Performances, Dublin Fringe Festival, Eclectic Orange Festival, Hebbel Theatre, Krannet Centre for the Performing Arts, Perth International Arts Festival, Eyebeam Atelier and UCLA Performing Arts.
Venue Royal Lyceum Theatre
Reviewer Thelma Good

Thirteen people, on low coffee tables, placed on five different tiered levels look like arranged musical notes as they sit almost umoving during this 75 minute staged radio play. John Cage's Alphabet was originally broadcast in 1982. Accompanied by a Cage score, it takes the form of the sayings real and imagined of fourteen notables from the past as if they were all gathered in some abstracted waiting room in the afterlife.

Merce Cunningham, John Cage's long time collaborative partner is Erik Satie, delivering with clear, mischievous delight, the most ironic and entertaining lines. Cunningham here returns with real presence to acting after 60 years away becoming a world renowned dancer, choreographer and teacher. James Joyce is voiced by Mikel Rouse who from a manuscript score of Cage's also composed and realised the musical part. Rouse plays a keyboard with added white noise, natural sounds and double tracking, sometimes confusing and sometime liberating the listening ears.

Linking the whole piece together in his movements, as he goes from character to character, is the Narrator John Kelly. Both in his sensually satisfying movement and in his narrative he provides a essential moving focus which ensures the whole piece doesn't spin into just a Cage voice and soundscapes. David Vaughan as Marcel Duchamp and Trevor Carlson as Brigham Young are the only other two actors who travel with the production and a further two are only heard on tape. The remaining 7 are cast from local actors and others more loosely connected with the arts wherever the production goes.

Billed in the EIF programme in the theatre section and described as a stage version of a radio play , it is an installation piece involving living participants and music - the kind of unusual event festivals host from time to time. Alphabet lacks a sustained storyline but is interesting to Cage enthusiasts and people who like ultimately passive theatre events. The text has frequent clever quips relating to historical character's lives which brings laughter from the cognescenti. But the structure means that overall Alphabet is an interesting but not sufficiently satisfying theatre event except for the fascinated few.
30 Aug - 1 Sept at EIF
© Thelma Good 30 August 2001