NEEDLES AND OPIUM
Barbican Theatre, London EC2
Opened 7 July, 2016
*****

As a cub reviewer in 1992, I was entranced by Robert Lepage’s solo piece about Miles Davis and Jean Cocteau, about creativity and dependency, about physical and imaginative space. Lepage’s star has perhaps waned a little in the interim, if only through increased familiarity with his imagistic, often space-bending approach and the emergence of newer, more modish non-naturalistic theatre-makers. The magic, however, remains nearly half a lifetime on.  From the opening image where the protagonist appears at once to be wearing a traje-de-luces, an acupuncture map of the human body and one of those suits that translate bodily movement for purposes of CGI, to the final moment when he seems to merge with the cosmos itself, this 95-minute piece is passionate about the need for us to embrace transcendence wherever we can find it, even in pain and addiction.

The magic remains despite it now being neither a solo show nor performed by Lepage himself. Marc Labrèche now plays “Robert”, simultaneously weathering a painful break-up and a trying voice-over gig, and also adopts a more fluting voice and a repertoire of fluid, wave-like gestures as Cocteau reciting from his Letter To The Americas. Davis, originally more of a shadow than an onstage presence, is now portrayed by acrobat and breakdancer Wellesley Robertson III, slipping between the dimensions of the constantly shifting half-cube set as wall becomes floor and vice versa, and miming the beaten silver notes of Miles’ trumpet which changed the topology of music just as Lepage and designer Carl Fillion keep our perceptions and imagination in permanent motion.

Three intersecting walls, trapdoors which become windows or extrude beds, an ever-changing series of projections, performers walking Escher-like through the dimensions with the aid of flying harnesses or through sheer gymnastic skill, and even the semi-taboo romance of preparing, shooting and savouring the high of opium. It could no doubt be argued that the glories portrayed are all escapist and/or vaporous, but that’s the point: we need to move beyond the emotional and artistic spaces we know. For the world we know has changed almost out of recognition in the past quarter-century, but the ultraworlds of Lepage’s work are as thrilling as ever.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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