Saturday 8th June

My Stories, Your Emails, Ursula Martinez

New Wolsey Studio

“I see confession quite politically: telling secrets, breaking taboos,” performance artist Ursula Martinez said at the Pulse Fringe taping of Thompson’s Live podcast.  “I think privacy and secrecy is overrated.”

Martinez is known for a magic striptease act during which she absorbed a red handkerchief through her hands and then pulled it from between her legs – as one does, in performance art. Her monologue My Stories, Your Emails is also concerned with absorption and revelation, this time involving standup comedy and her electronic inbox.

Martinez began with a series of stories about her family and early life, many describing situations that might have been gut-wrenchingly embarrassing at the time but in her abbreviated retelling were simply jokes. The packed audience in the New Wolsey Studio certainly found them funny, and was soon laughing well ahead of the punchlines about her Spanish-born mother’s way with English metaphors, the tricks she and her sister played on each other, the times she wanted to be thought beautiful or clever.

After playing a video of the magic striptease act, which was charming as well as legitimately amazing, Martinez shifted gears to review a selection of the fan mail she received after it appeared online. The laughs continued but with a questioning edge as she displayed photos ranging from the predictable penis ready for use to an endearing group shot of a police explosives squad with their sniffer dogs. She read out personal and business proposals with names, locations and other identifying details.

Critics of earlier performances of this show were divided on its cyberethics. At Pulse Fringe, the “Ursula Martinez” character carelessly appropriated private correspondence for her script, and mocked the internet’s lonely people and their desires in comic accents. The actress Ursula Martinez signaled finally that there may have been more collusion than she let on, and that she intended to make us think about how personal theatre is made.

It was a fitting end for a festival laced with strong autobiographical material, from the Ipswich narratives stitched together by Lucy Ellinson on the first night to Mark Thomas’s portrait of his father earlier the same evening. Ursula Martinez seems like a smart cookie. I bet she knows where the spam filter is.

Diana ben-Aaron

 

Bravo Figaro, Mark Thomas

New Wolsey Theatre 

Although billed as Bravo Figaro, Thomas’ candid portrait of his Father’s greater love for opera than for his family, this penultimate performance of the Pulse Fringe Festival was actually two shows in one.  A forty minute stand-up routine comprised the first half which was effectively an extended trailer for his new show 100 Minor Acts of Dissent which he is previewing InSuffolk this week at the Seagull Theatre in Lowestoft.

Based upon this glimpse 100 Minor Acts of Dissent will be trade mark Mark Thomas, literally in this case as he has trademarked a company name which provides the foundation for several of these minor acts, and will liberally employ Thomas’ favoured weapon with which to attack established interest – the balloon on a stick.  Fans should be tickled.

After the interval in Bravo Figaro itself Thomas sensitively and lovingly outlined a brutal, avaricious man with candour.  Methodist lay-preacher, builder and dispenser of rough-justice, the best word Thomas appeared to have for his Father, Colin, was hard-working and yet there was an obvious pride when he spoke of this partially illiterate, possibly dyslexic man harnessing himself to the old working class yoke of ‘bettering yourself’ by deciding to educate himself about classical music.

We heard his rough, South London voice gasping ‘Rossini’ and ‘Verdi’ in response to his son’s question as to which composers he first remembered enjoying, in an interview recorded when Colin Thomas had become confined to his home by Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.  The exerts from this interview and a few scattered, generally unused, props are the only concessions to theatricality in a show which otherwise does not differ radically in style from Thomas’ usual.  Despite Thomas’ assertion to the contrary the feeling that this is a show about redemption, of the healing of the bond between Father and Son, is impossible to ignore as, even when he is critical of his Father, Thomas cannot seem to help being grudgingly proud of traits he would find deplorable in others.

Despite regular beatings for himself, his siblings and his Mother, beatings severe enough to warrant ‘regular family reunions in Accident & Emergency’, Thomas still wants to give his Father a gift before he dies; a gift none of his other children can provide.  A performance by singers from The Royal Opera House in his Father’s living room is what, thanks to a commission from the ROH, Thomas is able to gift his Father.  It is a performance which breaks the stupor the Palsy has inflicted and which provides a satisfyingly unsentimental finale to this funny and enjoyable personal tale.  It also demonstrated that, no matter how deeply held our personal moral code or strongly annunciated our political viewpoint, our attachment to family can trump it all.

Bravo Figaro was due to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April this year but in one of those curious twists of fate Colin Thomas died on the morning of the broadcast, an event which, according to Mark Thomas, was in keeping with the rest of his Father’s life; he was he said, an inveterate heckler.  There’s obviously more of the old man in him than the son may care to admit but this last ever performance of Bravo Figaro left you with the feeling that Mark Thomas may actually be quiet comfortable with that.  And so he should be.

Steve Hawthorne

We,Object. Figs in Wigs

New Wolsey Theatre

Peas played a central role in Leftovers, the first Figs in Wigs show at Pulse 2013, but as they reminded us several times, We,Object was absolutely not about the small things, or even the wee objects.

It is quite possible that everyone who saw We,Object would have a different answer if asked what is was about, such are the varied visual and verbal ingredients that go into making up a Figs in Wigs performance and that can only be a high recommendation. Even at a Fringe Festival as good as Pulse some shows fall into clear and marketable categories but that’s not a fate ever likely to befall Figs in Wigs (Alice Roots, Rachel Gammon, Sarah Moore, Rachel Porter and Suzanna Hurst) while their work stays as fresh and fruitful as this.

For me at least We,Object was about how the small things can add up to a lot of hassle in women’s lives; about how funny the English language can be yet still carry a threat in every double meaning; about layers and labels and lipstick and getting tied up and held back and fighting back and how in the theatre as in life, late is better than never. And about what a good band Kool and the Gang were, of course.

It was all quite absurd(ist), very well executed and much more political than the dance moves would have you believe. Surreal silliness lights up any theatre festival and a double dose of Figs in Wigs was a very welcome addition to  Pulse 2013. Come back soon – you were grate !

Doug Coombes

Thompson’s Live

New Wolsey Studio

Chris Goode is the genial ringmaster in the circus of theatrical ideas.   Featuring Liam Jarvis, Ursula Martinez and Paul Warwick, Thompson’s Live is a performance podcast hosted by Goode.

With a dry sense of humour and a melodious voice, Goode starts by asking his guests what they have seen that they want to comment on. Jarvis, director of performance company Analogue, speaks earnestly and intelligently about his writing process.  Martinez muses on how her own Pulse piece, My Stories, My Emails, focuses on the sociological and political complexities of breaking taboos and secrets.   The co-director of Pulse, Paul Warwick of China Plate, speaks about the myriad of innovative shows he is involved in.

There’s an enticing discussion on Mission Drift, a US play.  Goode’s description of the poetry pamphlet, Letters in Harmony by Sean Bonney, is exciting.  These appealing snippets are perfect examples of how art intersects with leftish politics, which is a thematic seam running throughout this podcast.

The audience is an appendage to this fascinating chat about industry inner knowledge and gossip.  Although he promises to open up the discussion to us, Goode never does.  An assumption is made that because we are trendy fringe festival goers we will have the same political slant as the performers – that the coalition is evil and Michael Gove an idiot.  A debate with the audience might have been more interesting than a rambling political polemic.  Or as Goode refers to it: “the ascetic language of politics”.

This production chooses a chatty and improvisational flow of exciting ideas over sharp editing and structural tightening.  Some of the chat is like a boring audio listing of what’s on in the experimental arts.  An overlong discussion of theatre by theatre folk, with the nostalgic feel of a 1970s magazine programme being filmed for BBC Two.

Karen Harradine

 

Friday 7th June

The Forest & The Field, Chris Goode & Company

New Wolsey Studio

Pulse Fringe shows come in all shapes and sizes. Although it was staged in the square room of the New Wolsey Studio, it wasn’t easy to say which shape best fitted The Forest & The Field. Was it ‘O’ shaped as writer and director Chris Goode implied, the shape of Shakespeare’s Globe and the first word spoken there ? The rambling shapelessness of the forest or the clear open lines of the field ?

The Forest & the Field is a non-fiction work which consists of Goode discussing the making and meaning of theatre. He reads from a script while seated among audience members who line the four sides of the Wolsey Studio. More reading from memory would have been more effective although more theatrical too, which probably wasn’t the desired effect.

With minimal props and costume changes Tom Ross-Williams performs an impressive range of readings and visual interpretations of Goode’s script. Shakespeare  features heavily of course but there is a more surprising appearance by OJ Simpson giving his own peculiar version of fact and fiction.

The atmosphere set by The Forest & The Field is informal but not exactly relaxed. A (real) black cat lurks in the upper seats. Ross Williams is at ease with his frequent nakedness / nudity but that doesn’t mean its not intended to disconcert. Goode’s manner is engaging and eloquent but the questions he asks are serious ones, clearly informed by a deep understanding of his subject:

What is the theatrical space for: a silent and empty stage to fill with our solitary imagination or a meeting place of communal activity and exchange ?

Is the play the thing, or the idea of the thing ?

And where does theatre become real and real life become theatre ? Goode  suggests that as modern life has become more and more of an act the time is right for reality to reclaim its place in the theatre.

The Forest & The Field is intelligent, original and deceptively provocative. It worked best as an unspoken dialogue with the audience and not a monologue of Goode’s own ideas. Because of this its’ end is rather too resolved. Having asked so many challenging and important questions it might have been better to have left them all unanswered and left the audience, like the cat in the corner, a little nervous about what they’d heard and even wondering just what exactly they were doing there.

Doug Coombes

 

Best In The World, Unfolding Theatre

New Wolsey Theatre

Best In The World, written by Carina Rodney, directed by Annie Rigby and starring Alex Elliot, asks a lot of questions about competition, winning and being ‘the best’ but its’ answers are much less predictable than Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor claiming yet another world darts championship. And those who didn’t know who Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor was before yesterday’s show were educated as well as entertained at the New Wolsey Theatre.

Elliot throws darts, plays the saxophone and goes bananas in an appealing / appalling display of Dad-dancing but the most affecting parts of Best In The World were the true stories he told his audience and the true stories of everyday heroism they shared with him through a playful and touching means of communication. Or was it a flight of fancy ?

The stories Elliot tells us are partly personal and partly about the ordinary working class men who became extraordinary darts players – Eric Bristow, ‘Jockey’ Wilson and Taylor. Their triumphs and tragedies in a ‘sport’ which anyone can play on an equal footing illustrate the performance’s message that we can all be ‘the best’ when we find ourselves in the right place at the right time.

No Pulse Fringe is complete without a generous helping of audience participation and Best In The World must be in the running to take this year’s first prize for that theatrical field of endeavour. Starting with the distribution of ‘motivational bananas’ as we entered, our role got bigger and better throughout the show. As with every other part of Best In The World this felt natural, uplifiting and sometimes inspirational. A true feel-good show, staged in the right place at the right time.

Doug Coombes

 

Thursday 6th June

 

A Faultline , Jess Latowicki

New Wolsey Studio

A woman walks on stage dressed in a sparkly, gold lame dress.  She puts on a crash helmet and knee pads.  She then talks to us for half an hour about her intention to run 20 times into the brick wall on her right.  She speaks in a fairly monotone voice.  She tells us a number of things.  The reason she is doing this; for no other reason than it is there, the fact there are no laws to stop her.  She is a consenting adult and this is her choice.  She says she is not trying to make a point,  feminist, political or otherwise. There is no point in what she is doing other than the wall is there and she has decided to run into it.

She speaks a little about other things including what its like to be in an earthquake but it is hard to focus on what she is saying because we are all wondering, ‘Is this woman for real?  Will she really run 20 times into the wall?’ And then after half an hour she does what she says; she runs into the brick wall, only its  27 times (my friend counted!)  and at the end she has obviously suffered some pain.  She takes a drink and leaves the stage – The End.

Jess Latowicki is part of Made in China a visceral, part performance, part live art company from the USA. They specialise in trying to shock, pushing the boundaries of what is theatre and what is art.  This was not an easy piece to watch or experience and maybe that was the point.  If you go away reacting, whatever the reaction might be, maybe they have achieved their goal.

The performance was intense and I think left many of the audience bemused.  Should we have stopped her hurting herself?  What level of self harm is acceptable?  Is it acceptable just because the person in question consents to it?  At least it got us talking but I cannot say I would want to sit through it again.

Suzanne Hawkes

Bitch Boxer, Snuff Box Theatre 

New Wolsey Theatre

The small square of the boxing ring is liberating for Chloe, a tough East London kid who learnt from her father to sublimate emotional pain in workouts. She suffers her worst grief while training for a big meet where women will compete for the first time. Faced with an insurmountable opportunity, will she pull it off ?

Writer and performer Charlotte Josephine brought Chloe’s world to life with vivid energy, riveting the audience with laser-focused eye contact and grabbing the spotlight from herself again and again. Chloe pulls off her sweatshirt to show her muscles, stings like a bee to the beat of Johnny Cash, raps out hilarious stories of her post-teen world, all without ever leaving dead air. She’s not someone you turn your back on, in the ring or anywhere else. At the same time, she has ordinary, even laughable fears and finds love can make her cynicism slip.

It would be easy to play this story as a conflict between sex stereotypes, and to her credit Josephine doesn’t go too far down that road. It’s more about learning to get over hurdles, literally and metaphorically. When Chloe explains how her punch-it-out strategy of emotional management leaves her calm and quiet, the show unexpectedly echoes Mess, Caroline Horton’s play about anorexia that played at Pulse earlier in the week.

The show from by Snuff Box Theatre in collaboration with Richard Jordan productions is simply produced and well timed with Nicola Adams’ Olympic gold. Chloe is an original character and Charlotte Josephine is a writer of power.

Diana ben-Aaron

 

Wednesday 5th June

Predator: Finishing Off What I Started When I Was Five, Bootworks Theatre

New Wolsey Studio

I know what you are going to ask: do you need to have seen the film?  The short answer to that is no.  I have seen the Arnold Schwartzenegger Predator movie once; a shadowy, poor quality pirate video a friend had obtained prior to the UK cinema release.  The fact that I have never bothered to watch it again tells you what I thought of it.  But for Andy Roberts of Bootworks Theatre it formed a pillar of his childhood as he and his brother re-enacted scenes from the film they had surreptitiously video taped late one night.

Roberts enlisted three members of the audience to help him relive his childhood memory and exorcise the disappointment of losing his playmate, his brother, to that most insidious of conditions – maturity.

The trashy, lo-fi tone of Predator is set from the off by the Plan 9 From Outer Space-esqe recreation of the beginning of film and continues with increasing preposterousness and volume until the ball-pen explosion climax.  There is of course plenty of blood on the way but all shown in the same way that children have manifested it throughout the ages; by the use of  imagination.

You either decide to go with Predator or not because it’s sure not going to wait for you to decide what you think.  The audience at the New Wolsey Studio during the Pulse Festival plumped for the former and were rewarded for their decision with a volume of laughs a Hollywood director would give his golden globes for.  Lines from the film and in-jokes sprayed from the narrative like shells from an Uzi 9mm and the re-enactment of the panicky first sighting of the Predator by Arnie and his gang, when Roberts and his volunteers mini-gunned the audience, was a participatory delight.   It was about this point that I found myself thinking, ‘this is much better than the film.’

Characters were gradually killed off and then, just at the point when the Predator is revealed in the movie, Predator the play reveals itself.  Stepping aside from the cardboard cut-out action Roberts phones his brother and in a pre-recorded conversation receives the rejection which has put him on stage tonight: ‘I’ve changed Dylan, why can’t you?’

Why do I have to? is Robert’s un-uttered reply.  Why can’t we just play forever?  Arnie’s commando knife could not have torn a more ragged hole and through it came pouring a cascade of memories of summer’s afternoons spent playing war or cowboys and indians and alongside them the faces of half-forgotten comrades from a hundred desperate last stands before teatime.  A mini-gunning would have left less wounds.

Predator is a hilariously trashy, anarchic, juvenile show which despite it’s frat-boy sensibilities cannot hide it’s vulnerability and beautifully sensitive heart.  For those who remember how to play it’s an absolute belter.

Steve Hawthorne

 

We’re Only Here Today,  Talking Birds

New Wolsey Theatre

Knock, knock. Who’s there?  Two sombrely dressed men who appear to have something on their mind – and it concerns you.

Talking Birds’ Pulse Festival presentation was a fast paced duologue which encompassed every anxiety an unexpected knock on the door can bring.  In our wired-up, constantly connected world friends rarely turn up unannounced and unless you are an internet shopper a visitor at the door is nowadays more likely to bring gloom than gifts.

Bereavement, criminal activity, the weird and wacky were all dropped on the audience’s doorstep as matters they needed to address but before they could consider them David Colvin and writer and director Nick Walker (substituting in this performance for Richard Kidd who normally performs)  had flung the conversation in another direction.  The pace bordered on the frenetic at times and the skill displayed in a near faultless verbal performance was extraordinary.  However, as well conceived a premise for a dark and unsettling modern tale We Are Only Here Today undoubtedly is, and despite its polished presentation, it delivered neither the kick nor the shiver which it had the potential to give.

The fast pace deployed increasingly failed to give time to reflect on what had just been shown, and whilst this did work at first it did become a little frustrating.  Similarly the switches from light to shade were initially fun, the lighter moments possessing an almost Morecombe and Wise air about them at times, but had become a little predictable by the end of the 55 minute show.  The shade could also have done with perhaps becoming progressively darker and the show lacked one truly uncomfortable moment in which to derail the audience and uncouple them from their expectations.  There were a couple of interesting musical asides, I’ll always give a thumbs up to a show which shoehorns the bagpipes in, but toward the end my attention was slipping just when it should have been wound taught to the narrative.

We’re Only Here Today is an interesting and well performed piece which is well worth taking the time to see. My disappointment with it was purely because it did not deliver that which it clearly has the potential to.

 Steve Hawthorne

Read our review of Pulse Family Day, 1st June, here.

 

Tuesday 3rd June

My Heart is Hitchhiking Down Peachtree Street

Written and performed by J Fergus Evans, New Wolsey Theatre

Performing in a small room for an audience of nine people writer and performer of My Heart is Hitchhiking Down Peachtree Street, J Fergus Evans, led us through the heat beaten memories of his youth in order to investigate what ‘home’ means.

Given the space and the subject matter the performance was, as you would imagine, intimate.  Evans even learned every audience member’s name but thanks to his mild manner and gentle delivery there was never any threat of this becoming claustrophobic.  Stories of beatings, drunks and awakening homosexuality were punctuated with poetic descriptions of the flowers, streets and scents of his Atlanta adolescence.  Boxes were opened to reveal… well as with much in My Heart is Hitchhiking Down Peachtree Street, little of clarity.  Some anecdotes simply petered out, wilting like a southern belle in the midday Atlanta sun, others were interrupted by a different recollection or Evans repeated assertion, ‘no, that’s not it.’  Rather than being the frustrating device one might imagine the effect was entrancing whilst the lack of any punchline to the stories accentuated the intimacy, creating the atmosphere of a confessional rather than a show.

Despite it’s city setting it was Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion spiced with a healthy dash of Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me of which Hitchhiking was most reminiscent.  Evans felt like a country boy, not a city type, longing for the familiar landscape in which his heart dwells yet his accent, an unpindownable melange of American, Irish, West Country English and other indefinable linguistic influences pointed to a body spent in transit rather than stasis.

The only disappointment was the manner in which the show ended, when Evans simply left the room with no farewell.  It seemed a betrayal of what had been established in the space; friends do not part without saying goodbye and given the intimacy of the previous sixty minutes to leave the assembled company without any acknowledgement of what had passed was not just anti-climactic but actually felt a little rude.  However an hour in the company of J Fergus Evans is a gentle, poetic affair which never becomes as uncomfortable as he occasionally likes to hints it may; it seems that he remains at heart a southern gentleman.

And so what does ‘home’ mean?  There was no definitive answer but the evidence of My Heart is Hitchhiking Down Peachtree Street suggests that, for J Fergus Evans at least, home is where the heart is; even if that is somewhere you can never be.

Steve Hawthorne.

 

Major Tom

Written and performed by Victoria Melody, New Wolsey Theatre

A droll and humorous take on beauty pageants and celebrity culture, Major Tom shows it is the winning and not the taking part that matters.  Created and performed by Victoria Melody and starring her plucky basset hound of said title, this show is like a hilarious anthropology lecture delivered by a mad professor.

With a lilting Midlands accent that belies her sharp and sardonic wit, Melody charts their fearless journey to reach the finals of both the Mrs England and Crufts competitions.

Major Tom’s long mournful face and his reluctance to rise from his nap to perform for the audience contrasts wonderfully with Melody’s edgy and vibrant performance.

Various experts along the way are pressed into helping and Melody refers to herself as their “project”.   Her experience with a gastric band hypnotherapist is particular funny, as is a video clip of a bitchy conversation between beauty pageant rivals at a dress shop.

The comparison of their achievements and disappointments in this true tale works wonderfully.  One bitingly funny line flows after the other.  This was a quirky and flawless performance played to a sell out audience who groaned out loud at any setbacks and vigorously applauded every triumph.

Karen Harradine

 

Mess

Written by Caroline Horton and devised by the Company.

New Wolsey Theatre

I don’t believe the Marx Brothers ever collaborated with Susie Orbach and various medical advisers on a play about anorexia but if they had done it may well have looked something like Mess.

Mess tells the story of Josephine (Horton) and her history of anorexia whilst at University, supported with always good intentions if sometimes mixed results by friend/guardian angel Boris (Hannah Boyde.) The brilliant Seiriol Davies as Sistahl provides the musical and verbal soundtrack that underpins the play and links the scenes of this shortened Pulse version of the ‘real’ play (their ironic words, of course.)

The company disarm their audience early on as Horton announces that Mess will tackle ‘potentially difficult’ problems while Boyde and Davies’s straight faced comic supporting act lets you know that the issues may be difficult but the theatrical experience certainly won’t be. It’s serious when it has to be and funny when it needs to be.

The research carried out by Horton for Mess is rewarded in her sensitive and rounded portrait of  an anorexic, identifying control, obsession and anxiety as its’ origins rather than eating or not eating in isolation.

Despite Horton’s protestations Mess does (finally) have an ending which I couldn’t possibly reveal, although as Emily Dickinson said, Hope is the Thing with Feathers. And if that’s too enigmatic then go see the play for yourself.

All three of Mess‘s performers are names and faces to watch out for and in fact Seiriol Davies makes his third Pulse appearance of the week in The Pain of Desire at Jerwood Dance House on Friday at 9.30 pm.

Doug Coombes

 

Read our report of Pulse Suitcase Prize Day, 31st May, here.

 

Thursday 30th May

When I Was Old / When I Get Young

Lucy Ellinson

New Wolsey Theatre

The skill is in the editing.

Seldom can that adage have been shown to be as true as in this community performance which gave the Pulse Fringe Festival an unexpectedly emotional opening.

Memories were gathered from ten Ipswich residents, whose ages spanned more than seventy years, and were woven into a half hour narrative of astonishing interest which was relayed to the audience whilst the contributors stood on stage and witnessed their own testimony.

A very simple idea and one which could easily have provided a half hour of mundane reflection.  However under the guidance of Lucy Ellinson When I Was Old / When I Get Young proved to be an uplifting and enlightening experience of surprising revelation.   Hours of recorded interview were edited down to thirty minutes, the candor of which at times appeared to surprise those who had made the revelation as much as the audience.

Uncensored personal testimony is now a staple of daytime television yet this production did not possess the tawdry confession or mawkish self-engrandisment which the creators of those programs shamefully promote.  The integrity and honesty of When I Was Old/When I Get Young was never in question resulting in a connection between the audience and the performers which many professional productions never achieve. It was an honest-to-goodness delight.

Steve Hawthorne

 

The Bullet & The Bass Trombone, Sleepdogs

New Wolsey Theatre

The members of an international orchestra arrive in a tropical country to play a concert but find themselves in the middle of a military coup.  Spread across the city in various hotels they attempt to reach the airport to find a plane in order to get themselves to safety.  Told to us in retrospect by the composer of the new work they were due to premiere, the stories of the different sections of the orchestra are conjured from radio news reports, incomplete mobile phone recordings, interviews and music, some pre-recorded and some played live by the narrator.

From its first beats The Bullet & The Bass Trombone is an enthralling composition.  Writer and performer Timothy X Atack introduces us to the orchestra, a set of empty music stands, but his warm, intimate introductions are underscored with foreboding for the fate of these musicians, a fate which causes genuine concern as the events relayed in The Bullet & The Bass Trombone have a documentary feel.  Place names sound like as though you might have heard them; geographical references and the recording of the whistling man bird, whose plaintive scale starts the performance, are all so plausible that I spent the first ten minutes trying to decide whether these events had actually happened.  But those thoughts very quickly became irrelevant as the coup erupts and woodwind, strings and percussion play their way across the now perilous city.

Fleeing in evening dress and carrying their instruments the musicians become objects of suspicion.  A flute player is detained by armed children who demand a recital, citizens who have never held a weapon before take pot-shots at ‘the penguin with the big violin,’ whilst back in her hotel Antonia, the trumpet player, practices every note of every piece she knows in order to try to stay calm.  Timothy X Atack leads the audience through a fugue edition of ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, with musical refrain and journalistic detachment combining to create a thoroughly captivating narrative.  The lighting too worked superbly in tandem with the music and subtly washed the performance with emotion and drama as the score evoked terror, confusion and ricochets in the dust.

X Atack’s pace and tone constantly invites the audience to speculate upon the outcome for the orchestra: are those empty music stands symbolic?  But it is satisfyingly near to the end when this is revealed and the fate of some is demonstrated with a simple but moving device.

The Bullet & The Bass Trombone felt near faultless, the tension climaxing hilariously with a recorded interview between two members of the brass section the pay-off of which gives this work its title.  It is a symphony of orchestration and execution which it is hard to believe could be bettered.  If the rest of the Pulse Festival is half as good as this then it is going to be a vintage year.

Steve Hawthorne