Tag Archives: Mihaela Bodlovic

THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE

★★★★

Riverside Studios

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THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE at Riverside Studios

★★★★

“The anecdotes and reminiscences are poetic in style and Higgins has an energy that rises as he slowly takes his foot off the soft pedal”

From 1983 to 1985, ‘Memorial Device’ was the best band that no-one’s ever heard of. Mysterious, post-punk legends, they hailed from (but never left) the small North Lanarkshire town of Airdrie, just a dozen or so miles East of Glasgow. They defined an era. Well, at least they defined the formative years of fledgeling fanzine journalist Ross Raymond (Paul Higgins). Forty years on, Ross has invited us to share his memories. To celebrate and resurrect the group that exploded in a haze of surreal glory before imploding again into the mists of unreliable memory.

Paul Higgins, in the utterly convincing guise of Ross Raymond, wanders onto the stage, slightly nervous at first, to spend the next hour delivering a mockumentary. Supported by press cuttings, recorded interviews, demo tapes and memorabilia he presents fiction as fact. Before long it becomes pretty impossible to differentiate reality from make believe. The gritty truthfulness of Higgins’ delivery recalls the time and the place perfectly, reinforced by Anna Orton’s minimal set that replicates the sort of back room dive that such a band would have rehearsed and gigged in. You can almost smell the stale cigarettes and musty beer fumes.

“This is Memorial Device” is unique and slightly odd. Adapted by Graham Eatough from David Keenan’s cult novel of the same title, it falls into a no-mans-land somewhere between drama and musical, lecture and parody. The anecdotes and reminiscences are poetic in style and Higgins has an energy that rises as he slowly takes his foot off the soft pedal. The further he delves into his memories, the more animated he becomes as he draws us into the nostalgia of a world he is building around him. He assembles the past band members from broken mannequins lying in a flight case as though resting in a coffin. When he dissembles them again to put them back, you know that he is mourning an age lost and gone forever.

 

 

Yet, for all that we are drawn into his enthusiasm (Ross Raymond is undoubtedly a die-hard fan), there are moments that drag. The use of video footage comprising a series of talking heads adds credence to the myth, but occasionally go on too long. If we were at home watching on our TV sets, these are the points at which we’d get up to make a cup of tea. Fortunately, though, Higgins is always on hand to pull us back in. The hypnotic effect is emphasised by the monotonic and metronomic music, composed by sound designer Gavin Thomson and musician Stephen McRobbie – the latter is the lead singer and guitarist of real life, Glasgow band ‘The Pastels’ who, unlike the eponymous combo, are still around.

It is testament to the writing and to Higgins’ performance that it is easy to think this is all real. We buy into the fabrication. Like the novel, this show will gain cult status. We almost expected to be offered merchandise on the way out, and the urge to look up ‘Memorial Device’ on Spotify was irresistible. We have been touched by the stories of these band members. Particularly of frontman Lucas Black, who suffered from having no short-term memory. Everything was written down in a little red notebook (his own memorial device) which Ross Raymond has kept for forty years. It is more than a history lesson; it is a dream-like journey into a music scene and its off-beat characters. Some died, some disappeared. But Higgins keeps them all alive. Even though they never really lived. That takes a particular kind of skill – one that Higgins and the co-creators of the show clearly possess.

It may not be to everybody’s taste, but I doubt it is looking for universal appeal. At curtain call, Higgins thanks us for coming to listen. The pleasure was all ours.

 


THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE at Riverside Studios

Reviewed on 26th April 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Mihaela Bodlovic

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

ARTIFICIALLY YOURS | ★★★ | April 2024
ALAN TURING – A MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY | ★★ | January 2024
ULSTER AMERICAN | ★★★★★ | December 2023
OTHELLO | ★★★★ | October 2023
FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS | ★★★★ | October 2023
RUN TO THE NUNS – THE MUSICAL | ★★★★ | July 2023
THE SUN WILL RISE | ★★★ | July 2023
TARANTINO LIVE: FOX FORCE FIVE & THE TYRANNY OF EVIL MEN | ★★★★★ | June 2023
KILLING THE CAT | ★★ | March 2023
CIRQUE BERSERK! | ★★★★★ | February 2023

 

THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE

THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE

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We Were Promised Honey!

We Were Promised Honey!

★★★★

Soho Theatre

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WE WERE PROMISED HONEY! at the Soho Theatre

★★★★

We Were Promised Honey!

“It’s a sunny outlook on a very bleak landscape, but somehow it does the trick”

 

After singing along to two choruses of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ with writer-performer Sam Ward and the rest of the audience, my theatre buddy takes her arm from around my shoulders as the lights go up, turns to me, and, smiling blissfully, says, “I didn’t get it.” That’s almost as much as you need to know really.

We Were Promised Honey! is a calmly conveyed confusion: In August 2018 a baggage handler, Richard, stole a plane and, after performing some amazing stunts, inevitably died on crash landing. Ward interlaces this with some very controlled audience participation, and long surreal monologues about what will happen after the play is finished- in five hours most of you will be asleep, in eight hours, one of you will send an email saying, ‘Great, thanks Claire’ before walking into your boss’s office and quitting to become a farmer. In fifty years, one of you will think you’re Jesus. In 500 years, when the sky turns black, one of you will turn to your partner and say, ‘Why does it always end like this?’

The evening is split into three, and before the start of each section, Ward gives his audience a choice: We can sit here in silence until the advertised runtime of the show is over, or, even though you already know it’s going to end badly, you can hear what happens next. I can’t imagine there’s ever been an audience so hive-minded and strong-willed not to say ‘I would like to know what happens next’ so it’s not much of a risk, but it makes the point Ward is, I think, trying to make: Yes, we are all going to die, and the world will eventually end, and one day the last black hole will eat itself and there will be nothing left. But in the meantime, there’s plenty to see and do and say, and we needn’t sit in silence, waiting for the end to come.

It’s a sunny outlook on a very bleak landscape, but somehow it does the trick, and rather than feeling despairing and solemn, the audience leaves the auditorium heartened, in an almost festival atmosphere. Of course, that might not be Ward’s point at all, and maybe I just didn’t get it. But paired with David Doyle’s seemingly godly lighting, Carmel Smickersgill’s contemplative soundscape, and Ward’s smiling self-assuredness, it doesn’t really matter how it’s supposed to end. The point is I enjoyed the journey.

 

Reviewed on 23rd November 2022

by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Mihaela Bodlovic

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

An Evening Without Kate Bush | ★★★★ | February 2022
Y’Mam | ★★★★ | May 2022
Hungry | ★★★★★ | July 2022
Oh Mother | ★★★★ | July 2022
Super High Resolution | ★★★ | November 2022

 

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