Dolls Tramway, Glasgow **** Take one wrong turn, make one bad judgment call, and everything can change for the worst forever after. So it goes with the three couples in this exquisitely-realised reimagining of Takeshi Kitano's film of the same name, which takes a trio of light-as-gossamer narratives about love, loss and what becomes of the broken-hearted, and breathes the tenderest of theatrical life into it. A pair of damaged lovers walk in search of the purity they lost, joined forever by an umbilical red thread. A gangster returns to the bench where the woman he left years earlier still brings his lunch every day. An obsessed pop fan finally gets to meet his ailing idol.
This all sounds simple enough, but in the telling - for this collaboration of Hush Productions, the National Theatre of Scotland Workshop and Tramway - director Carrie Cracknell has stripped each story to its bare bones, leaving enough space for them to come alive in. The first story is almost wordless, with the couple's tragedy expressed largely through the unspoken elegance of Ben Duke's choreography in a duet with Laura Wheatley. Even in the other two strands, Jenny Worton's text is minimal.
The show's emotional pulse, though, comes through its live contemporary chamber pop score, written and played by Glasgow-based band Zoey Van Goey in an inspired pairing with composer David Paul Jones. The band's singer, Kim Moore, also plays the indie chick turned manufactured pop moppet who turns her back on fame. Throughout the play's 70 minutes, there emerges a bittersweet elegy of hope and heartbreak that's as understated and intimate as the stories themselves, performed in an act of love to cherish.
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