This is not a straightforward adaptation of a book for the stage, but then that is not surprising given that Volcano Theatre are drawing on WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, a shimmeringly unusual meditation tracing a walk through the Suffolk countryside.
The loose interpretation begins with an arty film full of peculiar interludes: a woman nailing white gloves to trees; two men aggressively dissecting fish. Then four performers, playing themselves, take to the stage, and a journey through music, performance, dance and Sebald-inspired mayhem begins.
Individual responses to the book shape the segments, and not all are positive: "I really didn't get on with it," says Paul Davies. "I like a bit of Dan Brown." The group squabble about the book yet agree that reading Sebald has affected them like "a literary virus". They dance a tango, or a Bavarian set piece; they take "very Sebaldian cuttings" from the paper and act upon them; they perform the Velvet Underground & Nico's I'll Be Your Mirror - noting that Nico was the same height as Sebald - and march back and forth across the stage.
Their seemingly random gestures capture the tenor of the original text, but also the divergent readings we make of a book. There is, however, a core theme, made explicit in a hilarious final scene in which a book is dissected on an operating table. To the sound of pages being repeatedly ripped, we are told that this is "a glimpse of a land now being lost for ever". This challenging, charismatic and suitably unclassifiable production leaves us in no doubt that books matter.
