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Post by jgblunners on Jul 24, 2024 23:34:12 GMT
I saw this on Tuesday and found it utterly mesmerising. The title is perhaps misleading - it really takes memory as a starting point, and from there it branches out into so much more. I lack the eloquence to give a description that really does it justice, but I find myself agreeing with Andrzej Lukowski‘s review for Time Out, which ends:
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1,972 posts
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Post by sf on Jul 25, 2024 22:02:33 GMT
Sometimes devised theatre can be absolutely thrilling.
Sometimes devised theatre is overlong and tedious and self-indulgent and nowhere near as clever or as profound as the people who created it think it is.
'The Seven Streams of the River Ota' - in the same building, though not on the same stage - was a shining example of spectacular work arising from the kind of process that gave birth to this piece, and it was one of the most thrilling, breathtaking, astonishing pieces of theatre I have ever seen.
This, on the other hand, was just two intermissionless, underwritten hours that felt much, MUCH longer. I really wanted to like it, too - but it's difficult to like a show that has climbed SO far up its own backside.
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Post by max on Aug 4, 2024 8:21:37 GMT
Rather than memory, this felt more about the human need to find shapes and connections - a logical narrative to support ourselves. It’s the ‘make it make sense’ impulse; or even apophenia - seeing patterns between random things.
The script does acknowledge that, but doesn’t quite make a convincing pivot from the promise of a pure examination of memory to the stories we tell ourselves in order to carry on. That's strong material - really interesting, though not quite as theatrically engrossing as I’d hoped.
The academic conference speakers were a clarifying highlight, all with their agendas and allegiances to their research teams; touting very different (and very certain) theories on the life and death of the frozen man. Same data - different stories.
It felt like a comic echo of an earlier murky fragment. When Alice phones from her search across Europe for her dad, Omar rightly suspects she’s had sex with a man who’s been helping her. Up until that point he’s accepted her box of her father’s effects without question. But Omar doesn’t like that the helper interpreted the box’s contents as clues to the father's life and whereabouts. To punish Alice, Omar tries to demolish the story the man deduced from the objects. It’s just a single line of dialogue, but ‘what if the [Jewish] prayer shawl wasn’t his….?’ opens up a whole world of darkness, exploiting memory of Europe’s past and hitches it to the father.
A show I’ll remember and keep thinking about.
It comes together in the end, or we fill the gaps where it hasn’t.
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Post by youngoffender on Aug 10, 2024 16:58:57 GMT
Finally saw the penultimate performance this afternoon, and wish I hadn’t. I would have happily sat through a scientific lecture about memory or the Neolithic man, and what fleeting interest there was here resembled that, but Mnemonic utterly failed to distil any of the material into a coherent and engaging work of art. The Omar/Alice storyline bored me rigid. The closest analogy I can draw for this is the calamitous Greenland. A memorable afternoon only in reminding me why bad theatre is uniquely insufferable.
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Post by aspieandy on Aug 11, 2024 7:25:17 GMT
When it was good it was pretty good but, as we pressed on, the good times faded as it became something other. Updated references notwithstanding, the 25-year gap doesn't seem to have helped: perhaps it is all a bit early years Tony Blair / cool Britannia; open borders, easy passage, a virtuous Europe. Humans have always migrated, often from danger, now to the shining beacon to the north.
Artisitc ponderings almost as frozen in time as the fella with 14 types of wood (14? yes, 14!!).
But wait! He probably had ... dark skin. Have you ever seen points so laboured as those about mountain guy and girlfriend (her Who Do You Think Are Are trip - really). And won't someone think of the roaming charges. New Laboured or preachy, though? Both? Agreed. Really enjoyed the set design, lighting and performers. Looked a sell out at the matinee yesterday.
Came out humming 'things can only get better'
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838 posts
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Post by rumbledoll on Aug 12, 2024 7:18:44 GMT
I'm in two minds about this piece of theatre. I loved the interlude, the lecture and the central performsnce by Khalid Abdalla - so engaging and engaged at every single moment.
Maybe this appeal more to the ones in the search of their national identity - I'm lucky to know mine exactly to the point that I'm aware where my great-great-grand parents waere born.. But ones who seek their roots, who have this urge to find out about their ancestors may relate to the characters more than I do.
All in all, it's too abstract, almost by-passing the point and I struggle to link one story to another in any meaninful way. Agree on some clever design and choreography choices, but also agree that it feels longer that it lasts. No idea how revelationary it appeared to be 25 years ago to deserve such high praise but for me it hasn't left the mark to linger for more than a couple of days.
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395 posts
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Post by lichtie on Aug 12, 2024 9:17:40 GMT
Mediocre for me - struggling to think why they keep hammering home that it is about memory when the text as presented is far more about perception... The iceman can't possibly be about memory given we don't have any for him, and ALice's story is largely about how others saw her father, not how they remembered him.
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Post by max on Aug 12, 2024 10:34:34 GMT
When it was good it was pretty good but, as we pressed on, the good times faded as it became something other. Updated references notwithstanding, the 25-year gap doesn't seem to have helped: perhaps it is all a bit early years Tony Blair / cool Britannia; open borders, easy passage, a virtuous Europe. Humans have always migrated, often from danger, now to the shining beacon to the north.
Artisitc ponderings almost as frozen in time as the fella with 14 types of wood (14? yes, 14!!).
But wait! He probably had ... dark skin. Have you ever seen points so laboured as those about mountain guy and girlfriend (her Who Do You Think Are Are trip - really). And won't someone think of the roaming charges. New Laboured or preachy, though? Both? Agreed. Really enjoyed the set design, lighting and performers. Looked a sell out at the matinee yesterday.
Came out humming 'things can only get better'
I didn't notice her travels across Europe feeling particularly Blairite/EU celebratory - hers were only short trips to find her ancestry (which she could do now), not an attempt to work/live/retire in any of those countries. Today she may wait longer to get her passport stamped I guess. For me, the piece was quite cheeky about things that might be seen as tiresome 'say the right thing' political correctness e.g. the American academic (the last of the competing 'experts' to speak) who within seconds you could tell was going to steer everything around to toxic masculinity; ditto the Polish expert most bothered about proving Poland's minds the greatest; and I think that's where the dark skin angle came in (?) amongst comically certain theories, which put some shade on it too. Perhaps I've remembered that wrongly though and it was raised separately elsewhere. |
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