Monday, May 14, 2007

waylaid

On Saturday, we went to see 'Waylaid' performed by IOU Theatre in Manchester, part of the FutureSonic festival. It was performed in an inflatable dome in Platt Fields Park, and each member of the audience was given a pair of wireless headphones. (For hygiene, we each had to wear a strip of cloth over our heads so that it rested between our ears and the headphones, which looked very odd.)

The whole production was odd, in fact. There was very little dialogue, and little was amenable to literal interpretation. The setting was a snowy waste with a crashed car half-buried in the ice, and the play seemed to take place in an unconscious woman's head. Some of it was hauntingly beautiful, especially the singing and the violin, but parts, mainly the changes between sections and some of the mechanical contraptions were clunking and intrusive.

On the whole, though, it was worth going. We did have plans to go to more in the festival, which had an interesting and varied programme, but never quite made it.

3 comments:

emma said...

Sounds unusual Alec - but I do like the idea of an inflatable theatre!

purkul said...

hya u,

great to c ya back n blogging alec, sounds slightly random this inflatable dome, but i find random is generally a good thing!

ill look forward to reading your next post

purkul
x

tone the blueshawk said...

Wow - I didn't know IOU still existed - I used to know two members of the company about 25 years ago (I wonder if they are still in it?) - they always were odd and close to wordless. I wish I'd known they were on. I will check their web, and go and see them. I'm so glad you posted about them - txxx