Theatre
One Thinks Of It All as a Dream
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
four stars
THE LAST song that Syd Barrett ever wrote for Pink Floyd, in 1968, begins: “It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here...” before musing on a state of mind that hints at bewildered fragmentation. As Alan Bissett’s play (directed by Sasha Kyle) makes poignantly clear, countless fans – and indeed the members of Pink Floyd – kept Barrett in their thoughts long after he had physically left the group. Mentally and emotionally he was long gone before that.
No-one can say for sure why Barrett became the “crazy diamond” achingly evoked in a subsequent Pink Floyd anthem. Was he already mentally ill before he became the band’s lead guitarist/singer and songwriter? Did the repetitive stress of touring the same material – plus the stress of coming up with new hits – push him to distance himself through increasingly wilful behaviour? Or was it ingesting copious amounts of LSD that sent his highly-coloured view of the world into overload?
Bissett’s lovingly and intensively researched play, commissioned for the current Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, side-steps posthumous speculation and doesn’t insist on any one specific trigger for Barrett’s idiosyncratic conduct. He opts, instead, for a wonderfully touching portrait of a beautiful, hugely talented boy, who seemed ill-equipped to deal with the routine realities of life. And by book-ending the piece with two extracts from Wind in the Willows – chapter seven, where Moley and Ratty find otter’s missing son in the care of the god Pan – Bissett conjures up the childhood influences that fed Barrett’s imagination with the whimsy, mysticism and love of nature he wove into his songs. If Euan Cuthbertson is a beguilingly wayward Barrett, his bandmates – Andrew John Tait, Ewan Petrie and David James Kirkwood – briskly ensure that the hard edged demands of commercial success make their presence felt as the dream implodes for Barrett.
Sponsored by Heineken
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here