To be completely honest, I’ve never much been a fan of surrealism. Having to review a surrealist play gave me a feeling of dread long before I reached the theatre, but this production of Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet, adapted by Dirty Market, may just have been the cure to my phobia.
Playing at the Old Library, the audience are invited to look round an exhibition before the performance starts, compiled of works by artists over 70, including Susan Sowerby and Simon Weller. It’s a lovely introduction and feels like your spending the evening at a friends house rather than a theatre, the audience are like other invited guests, who you’ll get to know as the night progresses.
The performance begins in this exhibition space. Ninety-two year old Marion Leatherby is given an ornate hearing trumpet, the first thing she hears are plans to put her in a nursing home. As she is shipped off to this sinister institution, so are we, the audience! Literally moved to a new space where the surreal adventure really begins.kets when a storm rolls in and nibble on fortune cookies that have been smuggled in to the nursing home. It’s a wonderful collective experience.
For a relatively small production, the company is quite large, and although some double up on roles it takes quite some time to even notice. At points it can feel a little overly ‘am-dram’ but you get so carried away you just roll with it. What you can’t fail to notice is how beautifully and intricately staged it is, it doesn’t matter where you look, something is happening, it’s so gloriously frenetic.
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What makes this production so special is that rather than make the audience feel like they aren’t in on the joke, The Hearing Trumpet embraces the audience and takes them along for the ride, and what a fabulous ride it is too.
