The Salon Project, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Wednesday 12 October 2011

If you think the modern world is killing the art of conversation, Stewart Laing's exquisitely constructed reimagining of 19th-century salons for a post-modern age is a perfect night out for closet intellectuals in need of stimulation.

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Neil Cooper

By taking over the whole of the Traverse and putting the audience at the heart of the action, Laing and his huge team for Untitled Projects are bringing back social networking in the old-fashioned way.

It begins back-stage, with the audience attended to by a coterie of dressers, who kit us out in formal garb that improves the posture and inspires all manner of fancy thoughts. Once we step inside a mocked-up drawing room, complete with chandeliers, our own costume drama is enlivened by a rolling programme of entertainments.On the first night, these included blindfolded performance artist Donna Rutherford mashing up some 78rpm vinyl with three wind-up gramophones, a stripped-bare tableau vivant with each model clutching some modern-day device and a live pianist under-scoring the affair with increasing intensity. Artist Rose English and Laing pepper the evening with conversational interludes, while guest speakers talk of designing imaginary tomorrows.Laing and co juxtapose past, present and future in what is essentially an extended parlour game in which cleverness is encouraged.Only at the end of the evening are the pleasantries shattered as a film is shown of what looks like a symbolic murder of thought itself. As an apocalyptic thunder shakes the room’s foundations, it only sounds scary until you realise it is all created with computers.HHHH

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The Salon Project, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

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