The Edinburgh Fringe is rarely a place of experimental technology or stage effects anymore, but Nose Country for Old Men, from Mr. Hollywood at C Arts C aquila – studio, uses the Fringe stage as a laboratory to uncover how scent in performance can be most effective.
While there are some overlapping themes with the book and film No Country for Old Men, Nose Country for Old Men mainly uses the live performance space to break genre and media conventions. The surrealist play follows a character named ‘Mr. Hollywood’ on a lonely road trip from Los Angeles to somewhere in the middle of the United States. Mr. Hollywood listens to talk radio and voicemails while reminiscing about lost family members. The film on the upstage screen runs the main character’s view out of the windscreen, conveying the timelessness of the open road despite visuals related to passing time. The actor lip-syncs the monologue and has occasional phone conversations, including with God. He studiously avoids repeat calls from Madame Tussauds.
Pushing boundaries in a way Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers could not, the show uses the in-person nature of performance to include scents. Theatre has a long, contentious history with integrating scent to varying degrees of success. For example, the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Macbeth reference the sulphurous smell of the squibs used to produce cannon smoke; there are also the patented Smell-O-Vision devices created by Hans Laube in 1960. There are unintentional scents in live performance too, including perfumes, body odour and food, all of which theatres warn their guests about. Scent is a powerful trigger of emotion and memory, and it is easily distracting when it is out of place, which makes the purposeful harnessing of this sensory experience incredibly difficult.
I would not say that Nose Country for Old Men is successful in its experiment with scent. We were informed after the 35-minute show that different methods for scent distribution are being used across performances, and on the afternoon I attended they had ‘gone analogue’ with a large metal fan and spray bottles. One dramaturgical question plaguing scent-fascinated theatre makers is whether to use literal scents for something happening in the scene or metaphorical scents to evoke memories. This show attempted both, but all the scents were vaguely sweet, so they felt irritating and overlapping by the end. The smell of cinnamon buns was quite enticing, but the smell of Italy ended up quite similar, which was disturbing.
The experiment is intellectually engaging, but the team is perhaps distracted from the quality of the show overall. Nose Country for Old Men plays at C Arts C aquila through the end of the festival.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
