This Is Memorial Device

It's the character of Lucas, the lead singer, who emerges as the central character. Lucas has experienced several episodes of mental ill health and has little to no long term memory. His way round this is to keep extensive notes of his day, on the basis that he’s likely to remember very little of it the next day. Some of the notes make sense, many don’t. This offers us some bizarre hallucinatory moments that I’m still trying to process. Ross has discovered Lucas’ note book and tells the story of what happened.

It's hard to say what happened. The overriding sense we have at the end is that either, we’ve seen the most brilliant piece of theatre ever, or we’ve witnessed the parade of the emperor’s new clothes. There are audience members who are clearly enjoying the local references to Airdrie, which others of us simply don’t get. It’s like the reverse experience of a touring comedian doing the research on the next local town so that they can make their set local and relevant. I can imagine an Airdrie audience lapping up the humour. It’s clearly trying to say something about mental health and memory loss, but I’m not sure what.

It's fair to say that there are some clever approaches to the production. The weaving of sound, visuals and lighting all help to create an atmosphere. Higgin’s performance is certainly compelling – even if we don’t really get what the performance was about!