We all eventually march into the darkness, but the elderly former trombone player at the heart of this often exquisitely beautiful piece, created by Frank Van Laecke and Alain Platel, does it with a brass band at his heel. A production that swoops between high and low culture and combines concert, theatre and dance in one category-defying package, this is a show about community that places a community band – the Dalkeith and Monktonhall Brass Band – at its sweaty, brimming heart.
To be honest it’s not always entirely clear what is happening, but what we do know is that the local brass band has come together to rehearse, and that it might be the final time for Wim Opbrouck’s dying former trombonist, a man who can no longer make music because of the cancer in his mouth. Over the course of the next 90 minutes we see the orchestra, a group of individuals – solicitors, nursery nurses and pension administrators – brought together into a single entity, yet still expressing their own internal desires and rich emotional lives. In every insecure middle-aged woman there is a twirling drum majorette. Even the dying have dreams and desires.
As in so much of Platel’s work for Les Ballets C de la B it feels as if all human life is presented on stage. You never know quite where to look. What is happening around the edges is always as intriguing as what is taking centre stage. Even putting out the chairs in the hall becomes a fascination. It’s a show in which the gaps speak as eloquently as the action and messy humanity spills across the stage. Then they start to play and become one.
Even at 90 minutes the show is over-extended, and at times it is too bound up in its own internal world to let the audience in. But it is so deeply grained that it becomes absorbing.
Platitudes become philosophy in a show that echoes Pina Bausch (“dance, dance or we are lost” becomes “play, play or we are lost”), but also Pirandello (The Man with the Flower in his Mouth) and even Abba (Thank You for the Music). It celebrates the power of community and the importance of playing in harmony. Because, let’s face it, the rest is silence.
- At King’s theatre until 25 August. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
