LOST ONES till 20 October

London

LOST ONES
by Matthew Lenton lyrics also by Alasdair Macrae

bac Main Theatre To 20 October 2005
8pm
Runs 2hr 25min No Interval

TICKETS: 020 7223 2223
www.bac.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 October

Shadows who are offended: a tale of the imagination, imaginatively told.

Vanishing Point end their tour of this macabre tale, with its overtones of Shockheaded Peter and a whiff of Alien, at Battersea’s annual physical autumn Octoberfest. The production revels in the grotesque’s mix of humour and horror, with a dark staging where bare walls and a (black)board with chalked pictures and messages give a stark surround to the story, panels sliding open to reveal images either stark or blurred through translucent sheeting.

The lost ones are children who never returned from a school trip up a mountain. Their fate (which we have to accept never came to light, despite the helicopter beams piercing brightly through the smoky clouds and darkness) is foretold in the silent opening sequence where walking fingers are shot down, but is only fully revealed late on, as is the link with writer Theodore whose sanity and marriage are threatened by the spirits of children, a parent and teacher which appear to him.

Matthew Lenton’s production combines strongly imaginative visual images, such as boy-violinist Billy’s instrument floating away from his hands, with narrative propulsion – storytelling which works through collecting elements of the past as the present proceeds.

Images carry an emotional value; it’s funny to see Billy’s birth presented as an emerging between seat and back of an armchair, but when his retreat there is linked to his short life the image gains depth. The funniest sequence consists of an anxiously insistent mother hanging herself then appearing as a ghost who falls from a high window ledge. Her gradated descent’s finely handled, her ‘plop-plop’ return from squashed figure to life cartoonishly funny, alongside her sudden realisation she’s already dead. But the sequence, like, increasingly, the whole story, links to grief, loss, guilt and revenge.

Guilt and its impact on identity increasingly close in on Theodore, while the fantasticated children, with wild hair and white faces, and their necessary, inexplicable journeys into the skirting-board, emerge touchingly as lost souls, able only to voice things in childhood’s phrasing, with its keen, limited perspective. Inspired specifically by the theatre of Zofia Kalinska, this visual, atmospheric is superbly conceived and executed.

Cast:
Rocio Galan, Sandy Grierson, Claire Lamont, Alasdair Macrae, Catherine Whitefield

Director: Matthew Lenton
Designer/Lighting: Kai Fischer
Music: Alasdair Macrae
Costume: Becky Minto
Dramaturg: Nicola McCartney

2005-10-21 09:28:55