Visual Review: Florian Hecker

The Fantastic Four Review... Beautiful Cosmos

The Beautiful Cosmos of Ivor Cutler

Five parts of The Beautiful Cosmos, divided for assessment.


The Text: Vanishing Point use the life and music of 'surrealist folk' poet Ivor Cutler as the basis of the production. His songs provide a structure to episodes from his life, starting with his childhood in Ibrox through his relationship with Phyllis King, his success in London (he was a regular on all the BBC radio stations) to his senility in a home. Although some of Cutler's songs are performed in the style of the original (generally, a solo dour voice accompanied by the harmonium), others are orchestrated. Actor and co-creator Sandy Grierson's meetings with King are dramatised, both connecting the performance to Cutler's surviving associates and exposing the process of making.

The Direction: Matthew Lenton's position as artistic director suggests that he is responsible for the adaptation of the source texts - but the programme notes that it was 'created by James Fortune (the music director), Sandy Grierson and Matthew Lenton with the Company.' There is a broad chronological arrangement of the source texts, making Beautiful Cosmos a straight-forward journey of the man as artist. Yet by interrupting this simple narrative with song and dance routines, intimate and charming conversations between Grierson and Phyllis King (played with a warm, independent sensuality by Elicia Daly), the company juxtapose the art against the life, hinting at complex emotional depths behind the apparently humorous words.

The biggest interpretation comes from the decision to orchestrate Cutler's songs with a full band. Cutler himself was not a rock'n'roller, despite being in a film with The Beatles and championed by John Peel. Indeed, Grierson quotes one of Cutler's most famous complaints 'amplification is the curse of civilisation' when his microphone cut out. But in giving some of Cutler's numbers more rhythm and more melody, Vanishing Point explore some of the subtexts in his lyrics (his Jewishness in a klezmer-inflected jamboree, his dreamy playfulness in a groovy little number about a fly), while abandoning his art's frailty and minimal dourness.

When they reach Cutler's dotage, this is supported by a melancholic, disjointed sequence - echoing Cutler's decline and shattering the chronological span. It's a beautiful moment, capturing the alienation and confusing of a man on the threshold of death.

The Technology: A big live band, an interlude with foley action, Kai Fischer's predictably impressive set, a detailed lighting score (which Grierson's Cutler draws attention to by asking for the speakers to be turned down and the lighting made 'more miserable'): Vanishing Point slap the scenography out in front of the audience in that good old Brechtian style. The scenography is used to emphasise the theatricality of the show, to break any suggestion that this is a realist production.

This goes against the grain of Cutler's own aesthetic, but works to highlight his personal vulnerability -and the fragility of his art. There is richness to the ideas beneath Cutler's tranquil poems and songs, and the exposed technology conjures up a lively emotional life not always revealed in the sardonic recitations he committed to vinyl.

The Performances: The band do a fine job, Grierson convinces both as himself and Cutler, Elicia Daley is charming and Ed Gaughan works very hard in multiple roles. Good ensemble work et c... but Vanishing Point are never a worry on this score.

Ethics: Interesting category for review, this one. Isn't it?

Burn Jukebox Musical, Burn

Although the "Golden Age" of the jukebox musical ended in 2015, when a disgruntled gang of rock fans attacked the stage during the climax of Rape Me: The Kurt Cobain Story, it has never entirely bee displaced by the satirical musical theatre that now rules Broadway and London's West End. Alongside the record-breaking runs of Tony Blair: You've Got To Be Joking and Like A Salmond Up The Stream, the occasional nostalgia outing will play a limited run to half-filled auditoriums.

Welcome To The Terrordome is still an anomaly. Made up of tracks spanning hip-hop's evolution from a minority enthusiasm to a world-conquering genre, it takes a story that would not be out of place on a 1990s' concept album - Snoop Dog and Tupac fiddled about with the album as fictional autobiography, before Kanye West did it best - and threads in numbers that act as a partial history of the form. From the high-school hi-jinx of Bust A Move to the finale of Public Enemy numbers, Terrordome reinvents the jukebox musical as a consciousness-raising session.

The core narrative - young man is bullied at school, enters into a gangster's lifestyle only to become politicised after seeing a break-dance crew - is suggested by the musical choices and does not necessarily follow the untidy development of hip-hop: Public Enemy's style was largely eclipsed by gangster bragging. But the basic framework is enough to allow the musical to get down to business: the desecration of hip-hop classics, chewed up by an eighteen piece orchestra (none of that untidy turntablism here) and sung by an uncomfortable chorus of triple-threat performers.

There are moments of genuine humour: The Pharcyde's Oh Shit! is a skit on sexual misadventure, culminating in a wild satyr dance, false genitals and all; Bust A Move captures the anxiety of the school disco while the medley of NWA tunes balances on the fine line between stupidity and intensity. Fuck Tha Police is not best illustrated by a trio of scantily clad women brandishing handcuffs at the protagonist. It is the more serious themes that are most undermined, as the fierce rage of Chuck D is subliminated into a more palatable, socially acceptable political engagement.

Equally, the plundering of hip-hop culture is partial and unconvincing. The only scene where genuine hip-hop moves are used is in the disco, where a mild crumping contest fizzles out: the dramatic conversion is supposedly a breakin' contest, but is actually performed by a circus acrobat. It's unsurprising that the jukebox musical died: it shows a lack of respect for its sources, under-estimates the audience's intelligence (Burn Hollywood Burn does not need a firework display to clarify its message) and is so eager to please that it replaces any heart with supposedly spectacular set-pieces.

See Thru Sam: Truncated manuscript, fragments 1 -9

...most of all, The Incredible Adventures of See Thru Sam makes me feel old. It's in the quiet moments, perhaps not necessarily connected to Sam's melodramatic fantasy world, when he acts like an innocent teenager, trying to articulate the feelings of falling for the girl, or the fear of the bully. Emotions that I recognise but can never feel again, lost in maturity and experience.

The audience is predominantly made up of school pupils, arrayed in rows with a teacher at each end. They enjoy the bursts of naughty language and chuckle at the adults acting children. Sam's nemesis, his uncle Herbie, is played for laughs: the confrontations between the grieving Sam and his foster parent are presented both in real time and in silhouette, through Kim Beveridge's digital design, as a battle between comic book characters....

McKnight's script reveals his experience in pantomime: Sam's side-kick, Walrus, mugs gamely for all the world like a teenage Buttons...

... when the animation shows a scene - Violet's bedroom, the street outside Sam's school - the script has a bad habit of describing what is up there on the screen... less show or tell than show and tell...

...a version of the tragic structure described by Jean Anouilh, the inevitable conclusion clear from almost the very beginning...


...back to the problem of "the critical voice": my experience precludes me making a strong assessment of See Through Sam because it is not aimed at me...

Sam's perky good humour is gradually replaced by a more sinister alienation: whether this is a function of his grieving or some kind of personality disorder - the obsession with the colour green, initially part of his memory about his parents' death, is revealed as an earlier, inexplicable anxiety - is never quite clear...

... yet another twist in Random Accomplice's decade long journey through theatre: a play aimed more at teenagers... if Small Town was an adult bawdy romp, See Thru Sam transposes the broad humour into a tragedy...

...obvious research into superheroes, using the nuances of the Superman mythos to define the boundaries of Sam's experience. Indeed, Superman is a motif throughout, and Sam's geeky knowledge provides him with a few clues that help him understand his own experience...

My Shrinking Life (Immediate Response Required)

Dream is not destiny: the body is. There's no escape if nuture triggers the trap nature nutures. He fades in and out of the performance, his own anxiety replacing those faked out in front of the audience and the transmission all the more immediate for the imperfections in its signal.

"What the hell's going on down there, soldier? I can't seem to a fix on a consistent message."

The angel knelt before the Principality and offered a scroll. " She's taking soundings from her interior, sir. The mood and themes are in constant flux and her hope is echoing hollow."

The Principality knows the pattern. It is known in certain circle as The Belgian Fluctuation. In place of the expected and lineal plot, the action shifts from episode to episode. Temporal coherence is sacrificed for a more visceral reaction.

One moment, she is a young woman of perhaps eighteen, her life ahead of her. Then a flicker, a moment's glitch and she's older, reflecting on her ambitions and bitter that she succeeded. The ghost of the 1950s is prowling in her corridors, demanding a physical perfection expressed by the enactment of exact social conventions.

The audience is laughing in that special way, like middle-class Romans chuckling at the humour in a crucifixion. Bad words spluttering inbetween thoughtful monologues, a young man's voice becomes robotic as he observes the specimen.

"Now the word virus has infected him, too. Shit. He always was vulnerable, all that time he spent in Tramway in the last decade." The Principality glanced at the angel and grimaced. "He does this when he can't pin down the meaning to a series of simple statements. He gets the idea he's William Burroughs and sprays the page with random sentences."

The three young people are at the butt end of the party, languid and dreaming of freedom. It's three in the morning, everyone else has gone home and they are left buzzing from the drugs and high their own potential. It's the ultimate irony, the fantasy of youth as the darkness closes in on them. Like a flashback at the end of a horror movie, when the characters, all hacked to pieces by the nameless horror, are seen in happier times.

"Who is responsible for this?" The angel nodded towards the locked door. A single sentence stuck in a groove. "I don't believe in God, but I think there is something.. spiritual."

"Alison Peebles, sir. I don't understand why. She's such a good actor. She could have just gone for Shakespeare or Chekov.

"Someone let Lies Pauwels in, too. It's the fucking Belgian thing. None of this would matter if the bloody critic hadn't decided to join in the fun."

The angel pulled up her dress and revealed her legs. A tattoo on the flesh, five stars in an occult circle. It's never enough to reveal the suffering, it has to be felt. Biology's a bloody science, the details of the hospital, waiting room and operating theatre, hang above the stage. A child tips a pile of medicines and crutches onto the floor. The dancers show off their moves... the world's just a procession of people displaying their ability.

"They are using their ability to walk like a theatre company in the Fringe uses good reviews. It's an implicit warning of superiority."

Ladies and Gentleman, my final guest for the evening needs no introduction. Friend to the soliloquy, companion of the alternative interpretation. Alison Peebles is a national treasure. I once had a fantasy that Scottish theatre could be a mixture of the European love of devising and the English love of a good script. Alison - may I call you Alison? - had reminded us all that is still possible. When the trigger finger twitched, she was neither brave nor tragic. Instead, she was honest. `

My Shrinking Life on tour