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.