What a fantastic Week!
Along side the amazing fare of interviews last week and this week - the Kid was able to interview some big stars from the festival including Don McGlashin who played in Ian Hughes Show: Ship Songs.
Ship Songs.
An amazing juxtoposition between an Irish concvict narator, the tale of a forgotten Chinese explorer and the story of how his parent met. Interwoven with interactive film (computer animation on a large screen behind huges) our wily yarn spinner talks about a nurse heading to Canada to help eskimos, really to escape the drudgery of a post war UK but along the way veers off in the direction of a Chinese Explorer who having discovered most of the known world is ordered to be struck off the pages of history by his Emperor. At the same time he refers to his own history as a convict sent to a penal colony for "simply being Irish!". Along the way he jumps ship to land in New Zealand where he flls for a dusky Maori Maiden, but is later recaptured.
Along the way the show is peppered with muscial interludes and shanties written and performed by Don McGlashin and two collaborators (Chris O'connor and Dave Khan) with naughtical beards and gruff "arrhs!" and knowing nods. The animate sequences mix with a screen that unzips to create portholes, or spread aside to become doorways or even a sick bed where our nurse tends to her patient, a hurt sailor.
Hughes assumes all the voices of his charactors moving seamlessly between them and breaking in and out of charactor to make asides with the 'band'.
This was a brilliant show. I hear it was supposed to come to Downstage earlier in the year but didn't eventuate. If it does return then book early. I'd see it again.
The coffee Bar Kid gives this show 4/5 Stars!
No comments:
Post a Comment