This sublime silent piece by Theatre Re is truly moving. Effortlessly performed and yet incredibly layered. The main attraction, for me, is the open nature of the plot. A man and a woman fall in love. But the hows and the whys are left for the audience to create. Is the musician the man in the story or is it some unfulfilled fantasy of his? Does he go blind? How? Are they separated now? These endless possibilities allow the audience to create their own play with the hypnotic accompaniment of the two dancing lovers, played with skill by Guillaume Pigé and Selma Roth.
The ambiguous nature of the piece isn’t an indication of a less thought out devising process. On the contrary, the loose nature of the plot is what sets this piece above other mime or physical productions at the fringe. You can make your own tale of lost love as you watch beautiful bodies gracefully contort through bedframes. There is no climax or rigid structure, but that is a definite positive in this visually stimulating production.
The live music is an undeniable highlight. Alex Judd never misses a beat. As the ‘blind man’ of the tale, he loops piano lulls with staccatos on his electric violin, creating an incredibly varied soundscape that does so much more than ‘accompany’ the show… It provides it with its core.
The sublime serenity of the music is counterbalanced with glimpses of the everyday. The couple share snuggles in bed, catch trains together and awake suddenly from nightmares. But yet again this is artfully offset with the fact that the two lovers are wearing latex facemasks that obscure their features, eradicating their personalities so the audience can impose their own faces onto the love-struck or heartbroken couple.