TamTam Books News

Thursday, February 17, 2005:

This is interesting! I don't have any further information - and I haven't the foggiest idea where the theater is, but nevertheless there is a play out there on Boris Vian. Here's the review from Scotsman.com:

I'm a fool to want you

JOYCE McMILLAN


I’M A FOOL TO WANT YOU *****
TRAVERSE, EDINBURGH

IF YOU’VE ever wondered what theatre is for, then you could do no better than head along to the Traverse, where this glorious show by the Battersea-based company Told By An Idiot plays until Saturday. I’m A Fool To Want You is an unforgettable 75-minute meditation on the life of Boris Vian, the French novelist, poet, jazz musician, surrealist and absurdist, who died in a Paris cinema in 1959 at the age of 39.

But if Vian’s life was short, it was also vivid, hilarious and stuffed with poetry and music. He loved the great jazzmen of the age - Parker, Gillespie, Davis - with a passion, identifying with the culture, music and political struggle of black America. His work therefore represents a rare and explosive collision between American popular culture at its finest, and the European avant-garde; and this show captures that energy with a rare theatrical eloquence, combining a spare but near-perfect script, in the form of a flashback from the moment of Vian’s death, with some of the finest physical theatre Britain has produced.

The set, by Naomi Wilkinson, is a tribute to the spirit of surrealism, a beautiful wooden café floor that rears up at right-angles to itself, while the actors slide sideways out of the walls and dangle from chairs.

There are only four performers, including Stephen Harper who plays Vian, and the inspired Hayley Carmichael, who plays all Vian’s womenfolk, from his overbearing mother to his fabulous lover, Ursula. But together with Zoe Rahman on piano and Adrian Williams Longo on trumpet, they create a funny, sensual and breathtakingly good-looking tribute to the age when popular culture and music truly were a radical force for change.


This article:

  http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=180412005

Tosh // 10:15 PM
______________________

Comments: Post a Comment