Jeremy Welch reviews Endless Sunset Oblivion at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
This solo performance from Mike Baillie is similar to the Troubadours of France in the 12th Century. It combines poetry, narrative and music to tell the tale of Reuben.
Reuben, a talented songwriter, has submerged into the swamp of social media and is totally lost in that swamp, imagining, hearing and fearing all. The result is fitful sleep populated by nightmares and in each nightmare he dies. The algorithms of social media have created a compulsive narrative that feeds into his fear of an apocalyptic future where the world is under nuclear clouds, fires rage across the world and there is seemingly no future for anyone.
There is confirmation of this hopelessness as his friendship group consists of those who have endeavoured but always seemed to be short changed through no fault of their own.
Reuben wishes to compose the ultimate song that will reduce his dream endings.
Mike Baillie cleverly uses the mediums of narrative, poetry and songs to follow Ruben’s journey to the source of that song and the ultimate song itself. The source of the saving song is worth pondering. It’s good storytelling.
In places it is beautiful written, the poems are thoughtful and skilled as his music. Baillie as a narrator delivers the story well with many a twist and turn, at time oscillating between despair and hope. There were the usual first show nerves but they, I have no doubt, will disappear after the next couple of performances.
3 STARS
Endless Sunset Oblivion is on at La Belle Angele between August 4-13, 15-27.
Tickets can be bought HERE.
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