Lorna Irvine reviews 'a truly moving experience'.
Somewhere between a late 60s concept album, a la Tangerine Dream or The Soft Machine, and live immersive soundscapes like Fuel's Ring and A Band Called Quinn's Biding Time (Remix) lies Last Dream (On Earth).
Creator, director and designer Kai Fischer's performance piece (a co-production between the NTS and Tron Theatre) may be part of a trend, but is no less affecting for that. Musicians and performers on stage, including Gameli Tordzro and Mercy Ojelade, relay two parallel stories which pull together at the end.
The first is taken from original transcripts of Yuri Gagarin's first journey into space and is a dizzying account of his emotional responses prior to and during blast off.
The second traces a group of African migrants' dangerous trajectory into Europe. It is based on interviews Tordzro conducted with his own cousin and Fischer's interviews with refugees.
As the audience wear individual sets of headphones which 'wrap' the sound, no two people experience it in the same way. The live soundtrack is beautiful, chilling, occasionally playful.
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Adura Onashile, playing the ground controller Dawn, has excellent vocal work which occasionally distorts, or is inaudible and crackling, lending a real authenticity. Ryan Gerald's every gulp or breath is fraught as Gagarin, but it's Ojelade, making her voice small and sweet as a young migrant trying to escape and start a new life abroad, who brings shudders. Some did not make it.
Whether engulfed in the waves of the Mediterranean, or drinking in a canopy of stars, it's a truly moving experience: sometimes jarring, sometimes soporific.
Fischer's twin narratives could not be more of a contrast: the white privilege of instant celebrity uneasily juxtaposed with the black struggle for survival in a hostile environment.
Last Dream (On Earth) tours until April 18.
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