Review by Kate Gaul
This was a tricky one and I’ll say upfront it was not for me. The press release tells us that
“Acclaimed Franco-Uruguayan auto-fictional playwright Sergio Blanco returns to Edinburgh after his International Festival hit show “When you walk over my grave” to direct “Divine Invention”, his life-affirming new show about love, translated from Spanish and performed by his long-time collaborator, multi-award-winning director, Daniel Goldman.
Part metatheatrical performance lecture, part auto-fictional gay memoir, “Divine Invention” is a life-affirming exploration of love that interweaves Sergio's first experiences of love as a teenager with his boxing instructor and the story of Francis Bacon's doomed romance with George Dyer with a free-wheeling journey through the history of love in art, literature, music and science.
Across a prologue, 30 short scenes and epilogue, Sergio talks of his writing process and Superman, of musical labyrinths and Egyptian love poetry, of Tibetan meditation and Shakespeare, as he presents a radical vision of love as the technology that might save us from ourselves.”
A man sits behind a desk. On the desk are various items – a microscope (never used during the show), a pile of books (likewise), headphones, a human bone, a sports bandage, a computer, a notebook and a postcard of a Francis Bacon painting. He tells us there will be 30 chapters and then proceeds to read them, announcing the number before each part. This is always deadly because as an audience member I being to count. He does not move from the table. His gestures are repetitive, and I don’t believe this is intentional – it is just an example of the lack of awareness across the project. Variation is essential. The delivery is pompous, and it matches the writing. Thickly laced with the white male genius references. Madam Bovary gets a mention but it’s in relation to her death. He links first experiences of love (and sex) as a teenager with his boxing instructor and the story of Francis Bacon's tragic relationship with George Dyer. We have the history of love in art, literature, music and science and from a childhood devotion to Superman, to Egyptian love poetry and from Tibetan meditation and Shakespeare. There’s the Beatles and Satie – both played for us as part of the staging.
I appreciate the simplicity of the presentation, and I love a performance-lecture. I enjoyed the potential connections between the human bone on the desk and the bandaged hand (as in boxing). As an attempt to say something profound about love, it left me cold.
Image Supplied