6. 3,000 Troubled Threads.

A Play By

Chie Siah Tei.

This was the final performance of this play at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. The theatre is situated on the right side of the Usher Hall and I have been there a few times before. In fact I had a small walk on part in a foreign language version of Macbeth - that was a few years ago. Back stage surprisingly roomy but the corridors felt a little cramped and we were all warned to keep quiet when the performance had started.

The theatre itself is actually very comfortable and is a great place to take ones family or friends. The theatre is small and in the upper circle I felt almost as if I were in one of those old cardboard play sets so beloved of Victorian and Edwardian children. The stage can feel a little twee depending on the set design and the performance but that is just a minor quible. The front of the theatre is open and feels spacious - no chance of cramped theatre goers manhandling each other as they jostle for their seats. The bar facilities are top notch with plenty of seating, I am surprised that it hasn't proved more popular like the bar and cafe facilities at the Dominion Movie House on Morningside. As for the staff they are friendly although a little disorganized and some had the demeanor familiar of many staff here in the capital; I'm a student and I'm too good for this temporary job. I noticed two girls who slouched while talking loudly about their university course and accommodation while disinterestedly selling Hagen das icecream. One cocked her hip whenever any one passed by and she had tied back her shirt so as to exaggerate her natural curves. Her slightly dumpy first year friend seemed to think this was very cool. I knew all about this as they were talking at the front of the stage so it was almost impossible not to listen in.

The design of the theatre is good; the stalls are a little cramped but this time I was up in the upper circle which was almost empty. The decor is rich in the style of the 18th century Gothic revival with intense medieval decorative bits although the balcony fixtures were, to me, a little rococo with its flourishes.

Before I begin, I must mention an annoyance. My watch had stopped and the result was that I just missed the curtain so I was compelled to sit at the back of the stalls and was seated next to the sort of couple I detest; they were in their late 30's or mid 40's but dressed much younger. The man had a permanent smirk as he was obviously proud of the woman to whom he was attached to. Her white revealing dress and over powering perfume were hard not to notice but, like the country of Bangladesh, lots of people may know where it is but that does not necessarily mean they want to go there. She giggled coquettishly while she put her feet up high against the pillar; I guess she learned her girlish charms from those Emmanuel movies. Her boyfriend was not much better, his mobile phone went off and instead of putting it off he answered it! Such people, I have learned from experience, seem to enjoy the show they put on for others. It is as if they want to be seen as daringly sexy and successful; their craven need for such attention proves the contrary.

SO I do not know if it was my darkening mood or the play itself but I did not enjoy the performance. The Lyceum Theatre seems to cater to minimalist set design and relies more on specialist lighting, image projection and sound effects. The acting was passable but seemed stilted but that matched the set piece dialogue which I thought jarred with the contemporary setting and the characters remained two dimensional. The plot was obvious and the ending could be deduced once one realized what "melodrama by numbers" story this play was about. The review blurb mentioned that this was about Eastern culture and identity; it was more like the T.V Eastenders plot of the week.

Certainly there were things of value that needed to be mentioned; there has been little exposure concerning what it means to be Chinese here in Britain. When the media talk of Asians they mean Pakistanis and Indians, Muslims and Hindus. The Chinese community certainly have had a strong presence in this country and have been here longer but yet the impact upon popular consciousness has been minimal and only recent. Hong Kong and Bruce Lee are strong iconic images but they are also distant alien ones.

Despite my disappointment, I am glad that this production went ahead and I hope to hear more and see more of this woman's work. There are voices and experiences that need to be brought to our attention and I think that this playwrite is one such person. It is interesting to note that her family were Malaysian Chinese and that she herself settled for a time in Glasgow; it is from this experience that this work strongly draws upon.

I have already mentioned my thought on the acting; it didn't work for me. It was constipated and too self-conscious. Jennifer Black, who played Gioia the Hairdresser who finds her Italian roots and contrasts against the "rootless" young Chinese Ying, is a competent player but was let down by the stilted dialogue she had to work with. The two main players, the mother-daughter Pik-Sen Lim and the young Ms Sara Houghton, played well as Madam Chan and Ying respectively but again only in isolation. None of the characters or the actors seemed to work together, perhaps that was intentional, but overall I felt that something more could have been said and done. There is still a voice not heard and the characters did not go far enough. This playwrite is going in the right direction but I felt some point was being highlighted at the cost of something else, which all makes it rather inscrutable - don't you think?

5. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.

Performances

of

Ligeti - Bach - Mahler - Strauss

Went back to the Usher Hall; this time for the concert. The hall was not so busy although a number of the attendees had decided to dress up for the occasion. A few seemed to have cultivated false aires and appeared quite ludicrous. I had purchased the cheaper tickets and was right at the front, looking up at the performers upon the stage.

LIGETI - Poeme Symphonique.

This was a surprise. I had heard his other piece before but I was totally new to the opening work. Imagine my surprise to see a large collection of metronomes ticking away on the stage. Although I had arrived before the start, the machines had already been set in motion. It made me think of Man Ray.

There were to be 100 metronomes grouped into ten sets but I think that despite the number, they had been grouped into larger clusters. I could not check; I was that close to the stage!

At first it feels like a joke or trick b then you think of it like some sculpture. Slowly you listen to the sequences and you imagine patterns or follow certain beats. The metronomes slowly stop and out of the noise you find yourself listening harder to the remaining ones. There is expectation and suspense. Now it reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe; you know the work I mean. At the end there is only one and it is like your own heart. When that stops you stop breathing.

Later the vibration from the orchestra set one off for a wee bit. If the motif was death - then here was the resurrection! An added bonus was the assorted well dressed Germans who carefully monitored the machines and then carefully packed them up in the intermission. The program notes mentioned that Ligerti was a Jew who survived the war; I thought of the order of the death camps and the casual brutality of men and women doing what - for them - was just a job.

BACH - Komm, susser Tod.

MAHLER - Kindertotenlieder (extracts).

Now the funny thing is that although I have listened to the Bach piece before and I recall listening and watching the cellos; I can't remember if the piece came second or last. The program notes would say second but I thought it came last! I can only posit the answer that the army of metronomes must have hypnotised me; certainly I felt quite a blow and was thinking about mortality with the last tick.

Alice Coote gave a very strong performance of Mahlers "Kindertotenlieder" or songs on the death of children. Certainly the subject matter and the inspiration for these pieces were fueled by the power of her voice. She was a powerfully built woman who was able to bring strength while avoiding being any masculine or disharmonious aspects. I was quite bowled over! The songs were in German and although a translation was available in the programs, I did not refer to them during the performance. At first I felt blasted by the rich operatic voice of Ms Coote who stood but a few feet away from me at most. My ears rang with her words. It was only by the end of the second song had I recovered and drank in the grand waves of music that broke over me.

In the intermission I remained seated. Being in the front meant I was not obliged to get up and let people pass. I had brought with me a bottle of water although my original intention was to get a drink at the bar. Previously I have not availed myself of this facility and was rather curious to see if the service was any good. Certainly there isn't much room and it remained me a little of the old Inya Lake Hotel bar in Yangon, Burma back in the 1980's.

LIGETI - Lontano.

From what I understand is that this bit of music is to expredd distance. Instead for me it felt like a great sense of dread emerging and then subsuming the being. Certainly the fact that it had been used in Kubricks "The shining" must have played some part in my dark imaginings. All I can say was it was fantastic and my pulse raised with pure delight. The music was complex but also simple; a wondrous balance. My senses tightened and my sight focused onto tiny details; a frayed string from one of the violins, the delicate hand of a performer and the scratches to the front of the stage. Words fail to express the emotional and intellectual joy this work inspired.

At the end I would have savored the silence but the audience jumped in too quickly with their clapping.

RICHARD STRAUSS - Tod und Verklarung.

Most people are familiar with the small snippet from his "Thus Spake Zarathustra". I have come relatively late to Strauss as I was not previously attracted by his work. I had bought the Zarathustra CD out of curiosity and found it laborious to listen through. But this performance has made me reappraise this composer and reevaluate my previous dismissal of his work.

The title can be translated as "Death and Transfiguration" and might strike one as curiously religious for a composer who read Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and eastern philosophy. One can hear echoes of Wagner and Liszt with all its rich romanticism. The music presents the death of an artist as his body slowly stops working and his life ebbs away; it is both a decline and a release, a gradual breakdown and a calamitous collapse!

All in all I am very happy that I had the chance to see this performance. Afterwards I made my way home in a kind of stupor - I went into a local pub and found myself in the middle of a country western music kareoki night. I had a quick half pint and made my escape.