THERE is absolutely no-one like Rose English. For those who have never
encountered her, Rose is like the spirit of Gertrude Stein evolved in
the shape of a frustrated ballet dancer, a flamingo on stilts with the
tautological mind of a philosopher-scientist. In the past, Rose has
descended from and ascended in to the flies, worked with children, dogs,
and memorably, last time out, with a magnificent white stallion, in My
Mathematics.
But she has surpassed even herself this time. Bearded and dressed like
some 19th-century philosophic guru, she conjures up a piece that is a
divine meditation on, among other things, love, hero-worship,
immortality, memory, identity and the transitory nature of the
theatrical experience itself.
Conjuring is the word, for even whilst Rose's textual meditations are
devising magical moments of alliteration and paradox backed by a trio
playing tango at its most melancholic, so magician Paul Kieve is running
through his repertoire of illusions and tricks and the air is filled
with artists gliding, plunging, or literally seeming to walk on air. The
effect is at once ironic, fantastical, ethereal and deeply moving.
''The souls of the dead are in the drapes of the stage'' cries Rose at
one point summoning up, it seems, the spirits of all those who have gone
before. It is like being at a rather stylish but possibly suspect seance
by a Victorian hypnotist.
* Tantamount Esperance is at Manchester's Contact Theatre from June
23-25. Rose English's My Mathematics is at Edinburgh Festival Theatre in
November.
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