Technology gets everywhere. Blogging seems to have overtaken
freesheet paper publications in power as regards Fringe reviews and
recommendations, and several shows are based on blogs; most newspapers
this year (including this one) offer Edinburgh podcasts; and now the
iPod culture of aural self-sufficiency filters through in a clutch of
dramatic offerings delivered via headphones.
Dr Ledbetter's Experiment is
the closest to conventional drama, and I think coincidentally the most
disappointing. Through various darkened, imposing chambers in the
University's Victorian medical faculty, the story is told of a
fictional 19th-century doctor's hideous experiments in immortality. The
acting, though, is excessively melodramatic, so that one keeps
expecting grand Guignol
touches which never arrive. Moreover, in such confined spaces there is
simply no need to listen to the actors via headphones; the extra aural
dimension supplied thereby consists simply of atmospheric sound effects
and the occasional line of interior monologue.
Up-and-coming Scottish theatrical maverick David Leddy is currently
engaged on an "Auricula series" of headphone-based works. Last month
his Sussurus sent visitors
wandering around Glasgow's Botanic Gardens with a dramatic soundscape
on an mp3 player. Reekie is
similar: off one goes, equipped with player but unaccompanied, on a
mapped route through central Edinburgh. In effect, this is simply a
sound play with visuals supplied by the listener as one walks around;
there is little or no explicit linkage. The play – about loss and
disaapointment, basically, though also containing sidelights about
everything from Rosa Parks' bus protest to the Fringe itself – is
moderately interesting, but greater integration with the walk would
have improved things disproportionately.
This is the case with Ghost.
Headphones on, one embarks on a solitary wander around generally
unprepossessing backstreets of Leith, following a "thread" of red paint
on the pavement and pausing at particular points to listen to segments
of Judith Adams' haunting near-monologue about a supernatural artist
and craftsman whose talents are no substitute for fulfilment in his
personal life. Footsteps or children's laughter appear to sound behind
one; at one point, gazing around a shopping precinct, a sudden moment
of perfect beauty emerges, followed by one of paranoia as the
headphones claim that unknowing passers-by are in fact mere
people-shaped simulacra. There is enough fascination in the aural
component, and just enough design in the route and visuals, to make
this a genuinely haunting experience.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.
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