In 1984 the great French novelist Marguerite Duras wrote the story of her own youth in Vietnam, a personal truth told in passionate, vivid fragments. These incandescent glimpses of remembrance became one of the most acclaimed and widely read books of modern French literature. Read more …
Now three of Scotland’s major performing arts companies are collaborating in theatre and dance to bring her story to the stage; taking us back to 1929 when a fifteen year old girl crossing the Mekong Delta first catches the attention of an older Chinese man and accepts a ride in his chauffeured limousine. She has no idea how this chance meeting will change her life forever.
50 years on, looking back on their illicit affair which flared and died, she finds the intensity of her first love still burning bright in her memory. It illuminates a past fraught with the confusions of the lovers’ ruthless desire, her own dysfunctional family and the divisive colonial culture which pulled them all apart.
For a production about memory, The Lover barely lingers in the mind.
The Lover is a fearless display of erotica; a gorgeous fusion of uninhibited dance and drama that is a visual and sensuous delight.
Pulsed by Torben Lars Sylvest's languid musical mash-up of chic fourth world rhythms and avant-cabaret nouveau chansons, what emerges is an ennui-laden living collage of sound and vision, where past, present and possible futures converge as one.
A production that lacks an overarching vision, and never quite seems sure of its ultimate direction.
Poorly conceived, and even more badly executed, this deeply disappointing offering does no favours to a classic of 20th-century French literature.
Colonial conceit, rabid racial division and cultural taboo seems as speciously relevant now as ever was.
Overall, this is a hugely disappointing production, which leaves little in either area to please dance lovers or drama lovers.
You appreciate it as a good-looking experiment, but it’s one that keeps the lid on its passions.
This feels like a missed opportunity, a theatrically and emotionally underwhelming experience.
An experience that finally seems more like a brief, elegant reminder of the novel, than a new and exciting theatrical engagement with it.
For all the production’s promise of being “an irresistible blast of sensual heat for the dark days of January,” however, the reality is that The Lover lacks full-on passion, or a reason to care.
An elegant production but translation from memoir to the stage does not always find a theatricality in the script.
Unfortunately, the way the dance and drama have been combined make it impossible to fully enjoy either.
They’ve made a work which mesmerises and troubles in equal measure.
Fleur Darkin and Jemima Levick--Putting Marguerite Duras' The Lover onstage.
Jemima Levick and Fleur Darkin on The Lover
Theatre Preview: Fleur Darkin and Jemima Levick on blending theatre and dance in The Lover, their new production for the Royal Lyceum
Marguerite Duras--Auld Alliances En Route to An Endless Remembering
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh from Saturday January 20, 2018, until Saturday February 3, 2018. More info: www.lyceum.org.uk