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Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Leonard Cohen Afterworld (a Play about Kurt Cobain)
Verdict: It's a mess
Edinburgh 04 - The Bongo Club - 17:00 (1hr)
A teenager develops an almost psychotic fixation with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. He discovers scratch-video, sound-sampling and computer-animation. In his twenties, he makes a connection between all of these and theatre. He mixes them together and produces a monster - Leonard Cohen Afterworld – (A Play About Kurt Cobain)
Matt Bloch shares the stage with seven television monitors. Offstage a bank of video players are constantly and noisily loaded and re-loaded with tapes of Nirvana performing - plus interviews, adverts, music personalities, animations, porn and material from late-night satellite and cable channels. It's a mess.
There's some progression - from the purity of Kurt Cobain’s image as originally perceived, to his inclusion in more mainstream popular culture. But there's no real focus.
The show is based on the idea of one person’s attempt to wrest some coherence and meaning from a tangled mass of memories and associations. The overlapping narratives, structural non-sequiters and disembodied voices are so mixed-up that it risks incoherence. It may be an accurate portrayal of one person's mind, but on this occasion it fails to engage an audience (of mainly twentysomethings) who fidget and wait for it all to end.
Cast Credits: Performer - Matt Boch.
Company Credits: Creator/Director – Austin Guest. Producer / Stage Manager - Alex Bush. Sound Design - Long Lekhac, Jon Carter. Sound Operation - Long Lekhac. Video Design - Greg Gagnon, Kasia Cieplek Von Baldeg, Noah Feehan. Video Operation - Greg Gagnon, Becky James. Light Design / Operation - Ben Seal. Text Design - Alex Bush, Austin Guest. Company – Experience This!
END
(c) Peter Andrews 2004
reviewed Tuesday 17 August 04 / The Bongo Club
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
