Sometimes there are conundrums (conundra?). I loved this new piece – jointly directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne – finding it intriguing, moving and unexpectedly funny. A woman sitting near me, though, did not applaud at the end. Moved? Disaffected? We talked. She didn't see the point. Yet we agreed we had seen the same things in it.
A simple set: pale, square stage cloth on a black stage; wooden chairs and tables, pale against black drapes, cut across by a rectangular screen. Lights and music infuse colours. Raphaël Chambouvet's keyboards and Toshi Tsuchitori's esraj and percussion also score layers of texture. They and the three performers create a tessitura of scenes around the experiences of people with synesthesia (an interlocking of the senses that means, for instance, that they may perceive sound not just aurally but also visually, as colour) and impaired proprioception (an inability to "feel" the body, resulting in paralysis). Glimmering through the whole are episodes from The Valley of Astonishment episode in the Persian poem The Conference of the Birds.
Kathryn Hunter is Sammy, a "phenomenon" of prodigious memory, whose mind creates sound pictures that she cannot erase. Her story is the thread we follow. It crisscrosses the medical laboratory where doctors scan brains and fire questions, attempting to identify the sites of their subjects' extraordinary sensory experiences. It takes her on to the variety stage. Here, her state of being becomes a spectacle, on a par with the card tricks of a one-handed magician – Marcello Magni confounding the senses of the real audience as he amalgamates sleight of hand with laughter. For Sammy and the "subjects", wonder, bewilderment, terror and ecstasy are shuffled through their lives. As Jared McNeill's doctor says: "How can we marvel at a mobile phone and not at the organism that is our body?"
"But," said the woman, "it's not theatre! You could do the same thing in a more theatrical way." That doesn't take away from my impression – of a performance with the qualities of a Beethoven late quartet: distilled essence of thought and feeling. And the conundrum? I firmly believe we are both right.
