Lipsynch

Synopsis

Lipsynch is an epic panorama that spreads from the middle of the 20th century to 2010 as one character holds the centre in an unfolding myriad of stories that discover how all of our lives are intertwined. Sweeping from extreme pathos to outrageous comedy, Lipsynch takes in scenes of war-torn Vienna, pre-revolutionary Nicaragua and contemporary Tenerife, Quebec and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Our Review:

8 September 2008

Robert Lepage’s new nine-act epic Lipsynch featuring nine actors covers continents and inter-locking life stories with an ease, charm and brilliance that is totally beguiling, but the whole nine-hour-event – well under seven hours of theatre, with copious intervals – is an exercise in theatrical sleight-of-hand that exploits the medium in a way both exemplary and unprecedented.

The title correctly implies that the main theme is the dubbing of sound on a silent screen – or, indeed, a silent scream – and you could look at Lipsynch as a sophisticated update on the movie Singin’ in the Rain, where the coming of the talkies in cinema is the subject of comedy and delight.

But Lepage also embraces newer technologies of the dubbing studio along with stories of speech therapy, the voice-over culture in advertising and international cinema, the transcendent quality of music and the business of simply finding you...

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 18 September 2008:

This is the 20th Robert Lepage production I’ve seen in the last 23 years. This has included concert staging for Peter Gabriel, Shakespeare plays, operas and songspiel; but at the heart of his output is devised work like this, of which I’ve been lucky enough to see 10 - two of them in different incarnations, 2 and 20 years apart respectively. This devised piece breaks the previous record for length by almost 3 hours, running at 8 hrs 40 mins including a couple of hours worth of breaks. It consists of 9 acts in five parts in four languages, each act centred on a different character with just nine actors playing all of the parts. The technical team required to co-ordinate the lighting, sound and set changes is considerably bigger; which you realise when they pour onto the stage to take a bow! The concept is to explore voice, speech and language. The story takes as its starting point a young Nicaraguan girl who’s uncle sells her to a German pimp after her parents die, but this is the last act ! Before this we see her die on a plane leaving an orphan in the hands of an opera singer who eventually adopts him. She marries and divorces someone who helps her trace him. He re-trains as a neurologist and marries a patient who is involved in dubbing the debut film of the orphan. Her sister has a mental illness from which she recovers enough to return to her bookshop…..It isn’t as inventive as his best work, and some of the connections and diversions don’t work well enough, but there are captivating moments of theatrical magic. In truth, there is a 3-hour masterpiece crying to get out, and it’s a case of less would be more. However, I don’t begrudge one minute of the nine hours I spent at the Barbican and feel priviledged to have witnessed another of this genius’ theatrical experiments....

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