Review: Pages From The Book Of…, Summerhall (Venue 26)

By Joyce McMillan
Published on 23/08/2012 15:38

THERE’S a rule of three operating in this ambitious show – by the 50Letters Theatre Company of Rose Bruford College – based on the life and work of the Polish artist, writer and critic Bruno Schulz, shot by the Gestapo in 1942.

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Devised in collaboration with two surviving members of Tadeusz Kantor’s original Tricot 2 company of the 1970s, the show tells the story of a mid-20th-century everyman who travels to a strange sanatorium in a distant town in search of his long-lost father; and deploys a huge student company of around 20 actors across a tale of fractured realities that really requires a small cast, and some emotional and intellectual clarity.

The result is a show in which every scene contains three times as many performers as it needs, and therefore lasts three times as long as it should, indulging in far too much repetition. Despite these limitations, though – and what is often an embarrassingly mannered attempt to reproduce Kantor’s white-faced 1970s style in the world of 2012 – 50 Letters’s production features two impressive lead performances, and looks suitably dingy and handsome throughout. And always, the legacy of Schulz shines through in the story itself, full of an absurd and haunting sense of humanity, even in its most disturbing moments.

Until 24 August. Today 3pm.