Tag Archives: Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh

THIS IS MEMORIAL DEVICE

★★★★

Riverside Studios

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

Click here to see our Recommended Shows page

 

BLUE BEARD

★★★★

Battersea Arts Centre

BLUE BEARD at the Battersea Arts Centre

★★★★

“A ricocheting trip through cabaret, musical, farce, drama, concert, pantomime, horror and fairground ride”

If you’re familiar with Emma Rice’s way of working, whether with Knee High or her current Wise Children company, you will know what to expect when you wander into one of her shows. And you won’t be disappointed with her take on Charles Perrault’s seventeenth century French folktale, ‘Bluebeard’. Apart from slicing up the title into two separate words – ”Blue Beard” – she has also spliced the slim story line, weaving it into a chaotic parable of her own, and throwing in seemingly unconnected subplots and bizarre characters. The beauty of Rice’s productions, though, is how each unruly element of her anarchic approach eventually has a point. Why, for example, is the bellowing Mother Superior of her convent sporting an unconvincing fake, blue beard? Is it just a tacky pun on the title? You need to wait for the strikingly resonant finale to find your answer.

Although it sometimes seems to take a while to get there, it is well worth the journey. A ricocheting trip through cabaret, musical, farce, drama, concert, pantomime, horror and fairground ride. Sometimes it feels like they are making it up on the spot, but we know that they left the improvisation behind in the rehearsal room, and that this is a precise evocation of a dark world where magic and danger lie side by side.

Most of the first act steers clear of the original story, barely dipping its toes into Perrault’s tale. We are in the convent, inhabited by the sisters of the Three F’s (Fearful, Fucked and Furious). Katy Owen, as the Mother Superior, starts to tell a story of a widow (Treasure, played by a sultry Patrycja Kujawska) and her two daughters, Trouble (Stephanie Hockley) and Lucky (Robyn Sinclair). The two girls, coated in years of unconditional love and recently fatherless, are being pushed out into the world to find their way. They soon discover that their cosseted sense of freedom and security is juicy game in a predatory male world. Which is where we find the charismatically menacing Blue Beard (Tristan Sturrock), a claret-clad magician who promptly saws Lucky in half before putting her back together again as his wife. The sleight of hand, illusory dissection is a portent of the grim reality that Blue Beards previous wives are locked away, in bloodied pieces in a secret room of his mansion. It is probably worth pointing out here that a quick read of the original story is advisable before coming to the show.

 

 

When Lucky discovers the dead bodies of Blue Beard’s former wives, she is determined not to join their ranks. Cue her sister and mother (in the original it was her brothers, but as this is a modern tale of the power of sisterhood, it is important to get the gender right). Meanwhile, a lost boy (Adam Minsky) is wandering around searching for his older sister (Mirabelle Gremaud). A confusing subtext. At first. But when you grasp the significance, it is hauntingly chilling.

Throughout the show the music simmers underneath and bubbles to the surface in a series of gorgeous melodies. Rooted in folk, Stu Barker’s compositions slot neatly into the narrative and allow the cast to show off their vocal and musical skills; Gremaud who acrobatically switches instruments while lithely sliding into and out of the main action. Never less than stirring, the solos and harmonies float above the acoustic accompaniment of piano, harp, guitar and percussion. Luscious moments juxtaposed against a brutal and bloody backdrop.

The climax is quite harrowing, delivered with undeniable passion, but perhaps spelt out in letters that are too bold. Yet there is no ignoring the urgent truth that it addresses – that of male coercive behaviour and violence towards women. When Katy Owen strips herself out of her Mother Superior habits, a heartrending reveal is discovered. Owen’s stark passion can take your breath away. We realise the fierce undercurrent of grief and loss that has been hidden beneath a haphazard musical drama that is full of laughs. A bewitching combination.

 


BLUE BEARD at the Battersea Arts Centre

Reviewed on 25th April 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Steve Tanner

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

SOLSTICE | ★★★★ | December 2023
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD | ★★½ | December 2022
TANZ | ★★★★ | November 2022
HOFESH SHECTER: CONTEMPORARY DANCE 2 | ★★★★★ | October 2022

BLUE BEARD

BLUE BEARD

Click here to see our Recommended Shows page