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Post by alexandra on Feb 15, 2016 13:42:27 GMT
Any reports yet?
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Post by Steve on Feb 15, 2016 17:07:28 GMT
Yes, I saw this Sunday afternoon (thank goodness the Barbican still does Sundays), and it's astounding, and Simon McBurney is a wildman! Basically, there's a metal head on a pike on stage, which is actually a binaural microphone, meaning that wherever McBurney is in relation to that head, it sounds in your ears that that's where he is in relation to your head. So when he breathes in it's ear, it's like he breathed in your ear, and your ear actually heats up in psychosomatic response to this person breathing in your ear lol. Anyway, McBurney demonstrates his technology, which includes a loop pedal, so he can loop any sounds he makes and create layers of sounds all around you. Then he tells a story. McBurney tells us that most of reality is stories, even the UK itself is just a story we tell ourselves, as in fact there is no such thing as the UK, just people on a land telling each other stories about who does and who doesn't belong there, and what people must and must not do if they are there. There are three layers to McBurney's story, which is as much about the process of storytelling as the story: First, there is McBurney on stage acting like a foley artist, creating sounds which are made with surprising objects, and doing various accents better than anyone ever did accents. This is the Brechtian part of the show, the part that deconstructs what he is doing even as he is doing it; Second, there is the story of McBurney preparing to tell this story one year ago, constantly interrupted by his 5 year old daughter (who is now 6), as he sets out to construct this show. She wants him to read her a story, wouldn't you know it, and her wanting that story one year ago becomes a story for us in the present; Third, there is the main substance of the story, which McBurney tell us, and not his daughter, for it is far too thrilling and scary a story for a 5 year old. It is the true story of an American journalist, Loren McIntyre, who got lost in the Amazon rainforest with the Mayoruna, a Brazilian tribe whose language he could not speak, and upon whose charity his survival depended. This third story is so immediate and so gripping that no film I have seen about the Amazon even comes close to the visceral impact this had on me. I realised that if I closed my eyes, the show might be even more gripping, but I didn't because I trusted that McBurney had a reason for wanting to tell the first and second stories, and I didn't want to shut them out. McBurney performs the bejesus out of this show, and coupled with the astonishingly intimate technology and foley effects, this show can only be described as a trip: it is like taking LSD. At one point I even started hallucinating, thinking I saw McBurney's chest open up like a shark's mouth with enormous teeth (this did NOT happen). I haven't felt this way since I ingested a certain substance in college and thought I had no body and was just a floating head. All the fun (and fear) of drugs without the drugs. McBurney's show is a revelation. If I have a reservation, it is that McBurney quoted the science of time, that all instances exist at once and time is a circle, and seemed to be suggesting that we could experience that circle, that we could ourselves step outside of time, as he suggested the Mayoruna experienced time. Well, we can clearly warp our headspace to that effect, but since we are trapped by the four dimensions, no amount of trippiness will stop us aging and/or dying I'm afraid. But that's a petty quibble. McBurney has so much to say about storytelling and reality, about culture and freedom, about our animal selves and our relation to our planet, about the bonds between every one of us. His themes are profound and meaningful, and they are laid over the most marvellous and thrilling trip you will experience in the theatre. 4.5 stars!  |
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Post by alexandra on Feb 15, 2016 17:36:07 GMT
Blimey. Thanks Steve. Glad I got tickets then.
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Post by David J on Feb 15, 2016 17:39:44 GMT
This is being live streamed on 1st March and will be avaliable until 6th
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Post by rumbledoll on Feb 15, 2016 19:37:27 GMT
Steve, what a review! Heard some people admired this show as well, but they didn't give any details but your post is so helpful for beginning to understand what's to anticipate. Thank you! Now I'm def intrigued and going to watch live stream! |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2016 19:50:40 GMT
At one point I even started hallucinating, thinking I saw McBurney's chest open up like a shark's mouth with enormous teeth This actually makes me quite glad I haven't got tickets. ;-) |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2016 22:01:35 GMT
I lasted one hour into this
And left
Just found it entirely pointless
For me wearing not very good Sennheiser headphones which I found uncomfortable was distracting and distanced me from the show
If you call a constant stream of effluent which is supposed to be some sort of subconscious a show in the first place
I have always found something massively overrated about McBurney and this self reverential performance borders on one of the most arrogant I have seen yet
Shockingly so
If anything the Amazonian tribe came across as annoying and made me want to chop down the rainforests quickly
The conceit of the "audio technology" did not impress me mainly as it wasn't anything amazing and I prefer Katie Mitchell's old use of video and sound with the use of a much more engaging narrative which actually makes some sort of coherent sense
I really have had a bad run lately likely due to poor co ordination of booking
Cleansed tomorrow
Which I saw in rehearsals so I know will love
Thank god
And then NT booking on Monday gives me some hope
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2016 22:18:56 GMT
Parsley: "I have always found something massively overrated about McBurney"
Perhaps this may explain why the first hour of a solo show by him was not to your taste?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2016 23:32:18 GMT
Parsley: "I have always found something massively overrated about McBurney" Perhaps this may explain why the first hour of a solo show by him was not to your taste?  ? |
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Post by DuchessConstance on Feb 20, 2016 2:08:53 GMT
Well that's tipped me firmly into the 'must book' category.
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Post by paplazaroo on Feb 21, 2016 20:19:34 GMT
I loved it, I can't add more to what Steve so eloquently expressed. Just one of this those shows so well thought out and cerebral that even thinking of the process makes you exhausted.
Great to see Complicite back on form!
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Post by lynette on Feb 22, 2016 3:46:32 GMT
Sold out.  ( |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2016 6:00:41 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2016 8:12:14 GMT
Cheaper than the £32 some of the returns were going for too. Thanks for the tip!
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Post by alexandra on Feb 22, 2016 11:37:46 GMT
Complicite shows always sell out; I got my tickets months ago. I too have little to add to Steve's description, though more than anything I loved the story, and I felt that it almost - almost but not quite - got lost in the aural box of tricks.
They're making it very hard for themselves: in Master and Margarita I saw things I've never seen before, and with this I heard things I've never heard before. What's next - smell?!
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Post by foxa on Mar 1, 2016 15:35:37 GMT
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Post by Polly1 on Mar 1, 2016 17:34:03 GMT
Yes, you'll need headphones but DEFINITELY worth seeing/hearing. Available for a week afterwards too, I think. I was so disorientated that on the way back to the station, I walked into a railing -still have the bruises after a week! |
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Post by PalelyLaura on Mar 2, 2016 11:21:44 GMT
Enjoyed the live stream last night. Wore headphones as suggested. Made less of an impact than I think it would have done in the theatre but still enjoyable.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2016 11:37:22 GMT
If anyone wasn't watching the live stream last night but is planning to catch up before it's taken down next Tuesday, I can strongly recommend watching in a darkened room. You definitely must use headphones!
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Post by oxfordsimon on May 25, 2016 21:46:47 GMT
Just back from opening night in Oxford. This truly is a phenomenal piece of work. I was very very dubious about sitting in a theatre with headphones on looking at a sound booth - but it is a thrilling piece of pure theatre.
I don't give standing ovations lightly - but this deserved it. How he can sustain that performance for 5 or 6 shows in a week, I have no idea.
There are a handful of seats left in Oxford. Grab them. Now!
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Post by drmaplewood on May 26, 2016 7:56:14 GMT
I made the trip to Oxford last night too, really really impressed. How warm was it in that theatre though? The usher dozed off!
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Post by zahidf on Oct 5, 2017 14:13:41 GMT
This is back at the barbican next year according to time out, between April-May. Onsale Nov
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Post by NeilVHughes on Apr 15, 2018 17:00:16 GMT
Caught up with this today, started off promising with the idea we are trapped in our ‘timelines’ and the perception we live our lives in a parallel world generated by what we photograph and what we buy and not what we experience.
In the end it became an overlong treatise on how if we free ourselves from our ‘possessions’ we can return to the simple lives of our forefathers in this instance an Amazonian indigenous tribe.
The soundscape created is wonderfully intricate and complex and slightly disorientating as the sounds cascade around your head.
As a sound experience found it exceptional, as Theatre found it rather shallow.
If streamed again I would recommend listening without viewing as what happens on the stage is superfluous.
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Post by bellboard27 on Apr 19, 2018 22:59:56 GMT
Went this afternoon. Totally agree with the previous post!
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Post by asfound on Apr 20, 2018 7:26:18 GMT
It was good as a sound experiment but I felt the scenes with the tribe quickly became quite repetitive as Loren stumbled from one hallucinatory scenario to the next. However, reading about the story subsequently made what I'd seen a lot more interesting - some of the more outlandish scenes I realised supposedly actually happened and Loren was quite an oddball. The binaural sound is fantastic.
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