D’you remember last summer when I went to see Electric Hotel by Fuel? It toured to a few different places, including Mayfest in Bristol, but I saw it at King’s Cross. The thing that was like a massive cross-section of a hotel, with lights and dancing and binaural sound through headphones, but no dialogue…
The Cleansing Of Constance Brown was a bit like that last night, except we were looking down a corridor instead of up at a great big fuck off doll’s house. And they just had music instead of headphones, including Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood ON THE LOUDEST VOLUME SETTING I’VE EVER COME ACROSS. I didn’t have a clue what was going on for most of it, but there were some brilliant visual moments: an office party turning into a wartime hostage situation, Queen Elizabeth I walking towards us while the wall closed in behind her, shredded paper being blown around by fans, a massive orange parachute balloon engulfing everything and then disappearing through a doorway at top speed. At the end we got to tour the backstage area with the actors, and it reminded me of that God Squad show with the Andy Warhol films, Kitchen, where everything happens behind a screen and all we see are the final recorded images.
My friend Tim wasn’t convinced it was that entertaining without dialogue, but I was quite happy. The set and direction and little special effects were stimulating enough that I didn’t really mind not knowing what the fuck was going on.
I finished my day at Electric Hotel at an old gasworks near King’s Cross. It’s like a platform game, or the Jailhouse Rock video, except with a light show and modern dance and headphones with perfect perfect foley work and score. And a surreal sequence of incidents in a seedy hotel, including repeated suicide, masturbation and a violent battering that ends in an epileptic fit. At least, that’s what I thought was going on. Whatever it was, it was pretty bloody beautiful, and watching outdoor theatre in the dark has made me WET MY PANTS with excitement for Latitude next month.
NEXT MONTH!
