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
