- Venue
- Opera House Manchester
- Location
Finally sitting down after the tricky, ascent up to the our seats, we hear a piano somewhere down, or… up, on stage. I've been wearing these upside down glasses for eight days, so sometimes I forget.
The chatting stops and the lights dim, spotlighting the instrument, being gently covered with snow. Simple but beautiful.
"Il Tempo Del Postino…"
The curtain goes up, we see… nothing. Surprising, maybe not… but then the curtain decends. Big, red and velvet and as it hits the ground a bell peels, music begins and the curtain continues to move. Gigantic ripples swirl across stage as it sweeps upwards, outwards and inwards, as it collects in little red gathers before swooping down to the top of the stage.
My skin tingles…
"YEAAAAHHHHHHH….." Doug Aitken's auctioneers start to call. This is a sound unlike anything I've heard a person make. It is so fast and so strange, torch light flits about the auditorium and then a woman next to us stands up as one "YEAHHHH…" fades into her first. The stage starts to glow, the calling becomes musical and as it does, music starts to accompany the voices. It all builds and builds and then suddenly
stops. The stage goes black, the orchestra cease and the voices finish.
4'33" of projected silence and stillness. I can't see the screen, its flipped, it seems far away and my slight double vision is irritating me.
There's movement in the auditorium, ‘damn late-comers' I think to myself. But there's light at these people's feet. The light moves to the faces and parasols of these women with patterned kimonos. They sing and the sound moves about the auditorium whilst they move their mouths and their faces express what they are silently or vocally singing; almost pantomime. But this is more refined than that and has in it a refreshing sense of elegance and delicacy . They step away…
…and then this is the part that I've been waiting for. This for me is so strongly connected to myself that my heart beats that bit faster. The upside down people enter the stage and are asked questions, "Why are they asking that?". I find myself a little disappointed but that melts as the moment comes where they will have restored their peripheral vision and although they're still hanging from the ceiling for me, the world will turn back upright.
Oswaldo opens his eyes, I hold my breath. This silence is about them, their return to the normal, their (now) unreal. Their eyes move around and I guess at what's happening inside their minds, will it be the same for me? They bow, walk off and I feel like I'm still trapped after their release.
The stage mirrors the audience, singing in the dark, monsters, a tree, triplets and puppets but I can't see and I'm tired of concentrating now. My eyes are giving up and I just want to go home but I watch the rest dutifully waiting for tomorrow.
