Southbank Centre is ridiculously easy to get to and with a 5pm start I arrived earlier to allow time to enjoy the south bank and to savour an ice cream.
The show quickly jumped into weirdness with an Adam and Eve with strange movement. It got weirder when a man with a ballon crawled out from under the rear curtain and the explored the curtain as if trying to return. Other charters emerged, often walking backwards, and interacted with each other continuing to make strange gestures as they did so.
They spoke with what sounded like an invented language but I soon realised that they were talking backwards.
The performance continued through three scenes, the destruction of the apple tree, the covering of the stage with plastic bags and the erection of a large statue of a man. Finally the stage was obscured with smoke. All pretty strange and a clear ending to what had been an interesting but not necessarily entertaining performance.
But that was not the end, only the half-way point.
The second half was blindingly brilliant and I loved every second of it. As with other reviews, I will not give the trick away but it was a clever trick expertly executed. I should have seen the trick coming, clues are in the name of the performance and in some of the things that I have said about the first half.
Missing from the reviews I have read is information about the music used in the second half and I hope my DuckDuckGoing has correctly identified William Basinski as the composer. The music was a key part of the show's success for me and I did not want that to go unrecognised.
After the show I went down to the stage to take this picture.
I went to Are we not drawn onward to new erA for weirdness and what I got was that and a show that was unique, spellbinding and magical. It is experimental art like this that gives experimental art a good name.
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