Dr Apple's Last Lecture @ Gilded Balloon

 

Next time you are in George Square, where the festival frolics and fizzes in the Spiegel Tent, and the Puppetry of the Penis hold forth in the Lecture Theatre, you might want to cast an eye to the heavy, grey building beside it...This is the University Library. Here beleaguered graduate students fight the urge to leave their books and plunge into the heady madness of the festival. Looking carefully, you may see them dipping in and out of the carefree crowd, books in hand, glasses on nose, twitching slightly in the unfamiliar sunlight...

This, my friends, is the world of Dr Apple’s Last Lecture. Handily combining an introduction to neuroscience with well-crafted demonstrations of physical theatre and ukulele playing, this piece, like any actual lecture, is best enjoyed geekily. It opens promisingly with a stranger offering you an innocent-looking cookie.

Curiosity briefly slides into boredom however as the carefully prepared slides of a hypo-something and various lobes of the brain flash before your eyes – you are interested, really, its just its warm, you are tired, its so hard to focus... As things get intense, they take a surreal turn: tiger-headed phantoms gyrate across the stage, Dr Apple seems to be having some kind of breakdown, and fragments of sound filled with significance, but little sense, drift across your baffled ears. For anyone who has ever worked a little too hard on an essay, this is familiar stuff.

Although the talented cast of Dr Apple grimace, gesture, dance and lecture their way through the twisted paths of academia and other mind-altering substances fantastically, David Lodge novel meets neon-suited theatricality may not be to everyone’s taste. Still, times are hard, and tuition fees are a-rising, making this is a must see for the generation that won’t be able to afford an actual degree.