Theatre review: Confined human condition

Published on Friday 18 September 2009 20:26

CONFINED HUMAN CONDITION *** TRON THEATRE, GLASGOW

BOTH the women in Cryptic's new music theatre double-bill are trapped – sometimes physically, sometimes mentally. As a result, a good deal of suffering takes place on stage, which isn't entirely comfortable to watch. No doubt that was the intention of the writers and director Cathie Boyd, but in a way they don't go far enough.

Of the two, The Baghdad Monologue, written and composed by Alejandro Viao, communicates most effectively.

Mourning the loss of her nine-year-old son, inadvertently killed by US troops while he played, a woman talks to us about life under occupation. For 30 minutes, we never see her face – just a silhouette behind glass and wire screens, evoking a prison compound.

Little is made of soprano Frances M Lynch's singing voice, with most of the text delivered as speech. When her vocal power is unleashed, however, crying out her son's name, "Kamil", it's incredibly moving. Mimicking George Bush, she repeats "shock and awe" over and over, making it sound even more ludicrous than it already is. Yet with such poignant material at their disposal – a dead child, the daily frustrations of existing rather than living – this could have been far more affecting.

Philip Neil Martin's Terror of Love looked stunning and sounded beautiful, but failed to carry any real emotion. Mezzo soprano Lor Lixenberg tried her best, surrounded by an incredible fetishistic set populated by spikes and mirrors, but it was hard to find any resonance in the text.