Glasway!

Glasgay! And Tramway are natural partners: Steven Thompson’s sensitivity to venue ensures that works find their appropriate space. Blue, Derek Jarman’s final film; Cryptic’s Ocean of Rain; Pacitti’s Civil: these all shared that intensity and awkwardness – and modernity – that marks the best of Tramway’s programme.
Ocean of Rain was sadly disappointing, despite excellent performances from singers and musicians. The score was bland, neither atonal enough to startle nor melodic enough to charm. The libretto was atrocious, consisting of banal conversations and monologues that were rendered absurd by the operatic voice. Daniel Danis has worked with Cryptic before, and is known for the poetry of his language. The mundanity of this piece ensured that none of the characters revealed any depth.
As always with Cryptic, there was plenty going on and a certain beauty in the complex visuals and an eerie atmosphere. Unfortunately, the strength of the voices and the precision of the band only emphasised the absence of development in plot, idea or theme. The names of the characters might have signified symbolic meanings (New York, Tokyo and other major cities), their back stories might have had a political or spiritual resonance. Sadly, none of this was made clear – or even important – and the final tsunami was unsurprising and unaffecting. Cryptic are always pushing the boundaries: on this occasion, the separate elements were not strong enough.
Pacitti Company have been staging Civil for over a decade: a tribute to Quentin Crisp, it handily dispenses with the mythic stereotype and examines an interior world more ordinary, but more emotive. Aside from a brief passage from Crisp’s writing and a video of a young Pacitti and an elderly Crisp strolling around New York, there is a little of the legend in this subtle not-quite-dance.
Richard Eton parodies the statue of liberty, marks his body with a knife, blood and finally wine in a hour that hints at the complex relationship between pleasure and pain, liberty and the battle for freedom. Being centred around New York, the themes have been eroded and changed by history: when once the images might have stood for sexual liberation, the Twin Towers inevitably evoke another narrative now. Yet the final hopeful plea for change, the wistful prayer of a man seeking his own identity, has a contemporary yearning.

Finally Blue: reconceived as a spoken word performance with live music, Jarman’s film takes on a new life. Another period piece, with Jarman’s politics very concerned with the 1990s and the culture that referred to AIDS as a punishment for homosexuality, it is the language that keeps this alive. Jarman was no mean author as well as film-maker, and the loose poetry that weaves together the story of his illness is breath-taking. Blue is a sad film, tragic as it mourns the death of a great artist and a fiery generation. In the large space of Tramway 1, the tiny film screen seems vulnerable, obscure and the message of hope and life all the more precious against the enveloping darkness.