Tag Archives: Nigel Edwards

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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Act & Terminal 3 -4 Stars

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Terminal

Act & Terminal 3

Print Room at the Coronet

Reviewed – 5th June 2018

★★★★

“‘Terminal 3’ is a triumph, eerie and tender, utterly human even at its most abstracted points”

 

Lars Norén is celebrated by many as Sweden’s greatest living writer, and the Print Room at the Coronet stages a double bill of his two shorter plays, ‘Act’ and ‘Terminal 3’, translated by Marita Lindholm Gochman.

‘Act’ is about the relationship between State and terrorist. Originally set in 1970s post-war Germany, the play is based around the incarceration of Ulrike Meinhof, but director Anthony Neilson has removed these references, and instead places the play in a dystopian future America, following a second civil war, complete with a Texan physician brilliantly embodied by the enigmatic Barnaby Power. Whilst this is a good idea in practice, the only reference we have for this is visual, and the reality of this is a lack of clarity that leaves the audience in a continual and unresolved quest for context. A competently done piece fuelled by Power’s performance in particular, it has promise, but due to its lack of clear placement, it seems to float, making the moments of discomfort easier to disengage with, and the overall impact severely lessened.

‘Terminal 3’ is a triumph, eerie and tender, utterly human even at its most abstracted points. Fog steams out over the audience, drowning us momentarily. Two couples wait. She is waiting to give birth, He at her side, whether she wants him there or not. Woman and Man wait to identify a body. Birth and death are directly aligned, Prosecco and flowers are proffered against a background of sobs. All four actors excel, distinct in their characterisations but equally adept in creating a coherent whole, not a weak link among them. Moving and disturbing, but laced with a desperately dark humour, the beauty and skill of Norén’s writing shines through across both pieces, but particularly in this latter one.

The design by Laura Hopkins across both pieces is consistently fantastic. The stage of ‘Act’ is a busy one on the periphery, bulk packages of Marlborough cigarettes and Coca Cola cans, a running machine, a mattress, a camping chair made out of a faded American flag. The central stage is bare apart from a single chair, hemmed in by lights – “there’s never any darkness,” M says of her cell. ‘Terminal 3’ splits the stage in two, one corner filled with flowers, the opposite corner with candles. The stage is divided by a semi-transparent screen, that turns as the space changes. Here, Nigel Edwards’ lighting design really comes into its own, unafraid to leave us in darkness, playing with shadows, lights that throb and stutter, a truly creative design that allows the space and the atmosphere to be reinvented over and over.

Seeing the plays alongside each other creates a lovely opportunity to directly compare the works and to begin to acknowledge themes in Norén’s work and way of thinking.

This is a double bill as it should be: beautifully written, beautifully designed and fantastically performed.

 

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography by Tristram Kenton

 


Act & Terminal 3

Print Room at the Coronet until 30th June

 

Related
Previously reviewed at this venue
The Comet | ★★★★ | March 2018

 

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