What Remains

In the anatomy department of the medical school of Charles Darwin and Arthur Conan Doyle, a mad musical maestro, Gilbert K Prendergast, unleashes his fiendish piano composition on the night his candidates seek admission.

The audience – divided into three groups – are the candidates, and we listen to the performance before feeling our way towards a spooky room of bedclothes where we lie down and fill in our forms.

Site-specific theatre hides a multitude of shortcomings, but Grid Iron’s production is worse than Punchdrunk on a bad night; easily the best part is David Paul Jones playing his own virtuosic piece right at the start. When he appears as Gloria Swanson in a bloody mask at the top of a staircase – well, it’s more laughable than scary.

You never know whether we’re supposed to be engaged in his psychological problems or our fears of piano teachers. The displays include fossilised bones, strands of hair, a dissected eye in a fridge, family photos and a row of soup bowls. In one room, you can pick out the opening theme of the concert piece yourself.

What remains? I signed myself Philip Larkin on the form and answered the question with, “What will survive of us is love.” It surely won’t be this 60-minute fiasco.