Brighton Festival Review: dreamthinkspeak, The Rest Is Silence

credit: Jillian Edelstein

We’re in a perspex walled box. Black floor, a faint glow from a large ceiling screen creating reflections of reflections. Boundless space. Projections of bare trees surround us, even above our heads.  A man walks toward us between the trees, goes away.  Another man looms in the extreme foreground. One wall is a close-up of his ear, leaking bloody poison. The image echoes around us.

A man wakes with a start.  His ultra-modern bedroom is a brightly lit box beyond our perspex wall. He steps through the door to his bathroom, an adjoining box, rehearsing the speech Claudius makes to Hamlet, urging him to get over his father’s recent death and join his new parents in a united front.  Overhead, we see him through the plughole as he tries out phrases and inflections above his basin.

Rooms appear on all sides.  A fashionable young woman nervously straightens her jacket; her brother does a few press-ups before slipping into an expensive business suit; an attractive older woman brushes on foundation. Multiple video images from advertising and politics are projected onto other walls.   A large room, one whole side of our own, is set up with a minimalist sofa for what looks like breakfast TV.

Behind us, a young man sits on the edge of his bed in the gloom, reflections creating the impression he’s underwater. He wrings his hands, and stares.