The Veil

The Veil, by Tramway Theatre Arts Group in collaboration with Artform, is an abstract audio-visual piece making use of all the usual trappings (stage actors, bolstered by voice-overs, movie projections, and live music) but there are some interesting original devices used also: all the projections fall on, well, The Veil, which is held up by each of the different characters in turn. Upon it we gain insight into their musings, be they sweet memories or fanciful imaginings of joyful moments spent with the other characters. There are some nice movement pieces, and the voiceover often strikes poetically, “my soul is unoccupied/ my sole occupation is love.”

Entering the theatre to a light soundtrack of classical guitar tastefully accompanied on keyboards it takes a moment to clock the fact that what you’re hearing is being performed right before you there, live, by two musicians sat non-assumingly in the corner. Thus the tone is set for the evening’s meditative entertainment. Indeed, the live score (by Bryan Tolland) is full of character and a real highlight of the piece.

Things take a little while to get started on stage, and while some of the segments tend to stretch out a little homogenously giving the mind a tendency to wander, the absence of any rigid running narrative makes the viewer’s attention welcome to the stage at any point when it returns from its own Veil-like reflections.

Far and away the most enjoyable and moving episode comes a little before the end when we watch a couple simply mime a good-natured conversation, sitting cross-legged on a bed at the centre of the stage, while other characters make surrealistic dance-like movements in the background. There is just something in the way the music crescendos that gives the simple ultimate scene wonderful power.