Theatre reviews: The Sound of My Voice / Little Otik

Published on Thursday 29 May 2008 21:15

THE SOUND OF MY VOICE **** CITIZENS' THEATRE, GLASGOW LITTLE OTIK **** CITIZENS' THEATRE, GLASGOW

IT'S been a long time coming; but after almost five years of struggle and uncertainty, in the effort to replace the magnificent triumvirate who ran the Citizens' Theatre for 34 years until 2003, there's a feeling that Jeremy Raison's artistic directorship of the theatre – now held jointly with TAG director Guy Hollands – is at last coming into its own.

It's a very different approach from the hugely stylish, brilliant and distinctive one developed by Giles Havergal and his team during their Gorbals years; it involves standing back and creating plenty of space for other companies, so that two of the three productions currently occupying the theatre involve different levels of co-production or association.

But the sheer buzz around the theatre last weekend – when Matthew Lenton's Vanishing Point company and the National Theatre of Scotland opened their new show in the main auditorium, while Raison's own adaptation of Ron Butlin's The Sound Of My Voice premiered in the Stalls Studio – suggests that Raison's strategy for opening up the Citz as a democratic, accessible theatre space is finally beginning to work; although it's perhaps significant that it takes his own finest work at the Citizens' so far to provide the strong centre around which the rest can revolve.

First published in 1987, Ron Butlin's novel The Sound Of My Voice – widely admired when it first appeared – was recently rescued from relative obscurity by literary superstar Irvine Welsh, who pronounced one of the greatest novels to come out of the 1980s.

It tells the story of Morris Magellan, a Scottish-based biscuit company executive who appears to be living the Thatcherite dream: he has a lovely wife, a nice house in the suburbs, two beautiful children.

The only problem is that as his name hints, Magellan is really on an inner voyage through desperately destructive seas. He is a hopeless alcoholic, unable to get through the day without constant visits to the brandy bottle stashed in his filing cabinet; and Butlin's brilliantly-structured short novel charts the course of the week in which Magellan's life finally reaches a crisis.

Raison's own adaptation – staged in the tiny, stifling Stalls Studio as the mirrored walls of Jason Southgate's fine set close in on the hero – charts Magellan's decline and fall through a simple two-handed interaction between a superb Billy Mack as Magellan, shaking and vomiting in his sharp business suit, and an equally brilliant and disciplined Rebecca McQuillan as all the other characters who move around the edges of his nightmare, from his loving wife Mary to the two little children Magellan calls "The Accusations".

The main dialogue, though, is really between Magellan and himself, whom he addresses in the second person, often staring at his own increasingly distorted mirrored reflection. And by the end of what should be a short 90 minutes – there's no need for the interval – the combination of Butlin's superb writing and a brilliant, understated theatricality in Raison's adaptation and production has produced a uniquely powerful and intimate account of our drink-sodden culture; of the excuses we make for it; of the half-understood pain that drives us to it, and of the moment of self-recognition that is the first step to recovery. Interestingly, many people in the audience on the first night seemed to feel that the natural response to Magellan's suicidal drunkenness was laughter. But that response only reflects the extent to which our whole culture makes light of this most pervasive and destructive of addictions; which is precisely why this fine piece of theatre is one of the most timely and significant shows Scotland has seen for a while.

In the main auditorium, meanwhile, the spectacular co-production by Vanishing Point and the NTS of Little Otik – based on the 2001 cult movie by Czech director Jan Svankmajer – also generates huge theatrical excitement, although without finally achieving quite such a strong sense of artistic purpose. Set, like The Sound Of My Voice, amid the polite normalities of suburban life in some generic European country – it could be Scotland, could be Austria – Little Otik exposes our addiction not to drink, but to the idea that life can find meaning only through reproduction and the perpetuation of the self. Like the film, the show tells the story of a couple, desperate for parenthood, who fashion a make-believe baby out of an oddly-shaped tree-stump, only to find that their obsessive love somehow brings it to life, creating a monster that begins to devour everything in its path.

Matthew Lenton's thrilling production – co-adapted by leading actor Sandy Grierson and the company – throws a huge battery of state-of-the-art theatrical devices at this powerful story, without ever losing control of its own chilling, tragic-grotesque atmosphere. There's superb, understated suburban-hell design by Kai Fischer; beautiful back-projected images by Finn Ross; animatronic puppetry of the most chilling post-human kind, and a superb cast of nine, led by Sandy Grierson and Louise Ludgate in chilling edge-of-reason form as the doting parents, and unforgettable newcomer Rebecca Smith as the lonely little girl next door.

The show's only problem is that it never quite achieves enough clarity about which aspect of this disturbing, shape-changing story it wants to foreground. This could – as Smith's compelling performance suggests – be a show about the exploitation of children by adults to meet their own needs. But the story seems rather to drive towards the idea that human ingenuity has become a horrible, self-devouring form of fertility, that destroys life rather than celebrating it; and if Lenton and his gifted company had confronted that aspect of the story more boldly, this could have been a truly great piece of 21st century theatre, rather than the fine and haunting four-star show it already is.

&#149 The Sound Of My Voice is at the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow until 7 June. Little Otik is at the Citizens' Theatre until 31 May, at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 3-4 June, and at Perth Theatre, 6-7 June.