In the darkness, breathing: thick, sexual breaths; primal breaths, fighting for life. It is the calm before the storm - the physical, dramatic, and sexual storm - that is to follow in a kaleidoscopic hour- and-a-half of theatre encompassing Gertrude Stein, a film about a wicked lesbian dominatrix, some ballet, Frankenstein and an artificial viper. Yes, the Wooster Group are in town.
What that means is theatre coming as close to carnival, to circus even, as you can imagine, but with a searing intellect running through it. So House/Lights is as audacious and magical a visual spectacle as any of their productions (a set like a lab, only with balloon-like electric lights hanging down and swaying in the foreground; six television screens; moments of almost giddy dancing and prancing across the stage), but it has a rare intelligence not only in its blending and bending of odd-bedfellow texts, but in every visual detail, every sound.
The core to the drama is Faust's encounter with the Devil, as retold by Stein in her 1939 libretto Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, in which Faust sells his soul to invent electricity. This is paralleled with a dodgy 1964 B-movie, in which Olga (played by Suzzy Roche, who is also the Devil in the Stein) makes Elaine (Kate Valk, playing Faust too) in her own wicked image. The Stein is retold, largely in monologue by Valk with a Betty Boop hairdo and girly voice, while scenes from the film are re-enacted on stage as they appear on screen. The two narratives chase each other, collide hilariously and, only together, make some strange, perfect sense.
Big questions lurk, about power and corruption, and more specifically about women and power, but it's what the Woosters make out of an avant-garde plotless wonder and an over-plotted hammy flick that dazzles, makes you catch your breath.
Ends tonight. Box office: 0141-287 3900.
