This remarkable piece of performance ar, creates and performed by Henry Davis, blurs the lines between music, theatre, and film.
Presented by The Ribentron Factory in Poland, The End of the Times? takes static and moving images from sources including classic cinema, reportage, and curated collage to present an anti-war narrative.
Playing in both live and digital versions at C ARTS for this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, The End of the Times? assaults the senses with images, many repeated, overlaid, or otherwise manipulated.
Those sensitive to flashing images may wish to avoid, but for the rest of us the message of the cost to children of current warfare is stark. The music is instrumental, an uplifting and developing wall of sound that invites us to look, listen and take notice of what our world has become.
Its initially a deeply political piece presented in solidarity with organisations such as Doctors Without Borders, International Red Cross and International Crescent, and capped by a more abstract and experimental sequence (God’s Kingdom) relating to our attitude to waste, climate and artificial intelligence.
I loved the audacity and vibrancy of this performance and the ideas packed within it. Whether presenting the image of a distressed child with a speech bubble ‘where are my parents’, a shadowy statistician exorting the value of armaments, or the repetition of a sequence of images shown so fast they barely register,you can’t look away.
The piece may be only 45 minutes, but there are thousands of images assembled here to create a viewpoint of a world in crisis or uncertainty, where we are conditioned to compere and win almost from birth. There’s even a strange beauty in the cruellest of images.
The End of the Times? is a work that I have watched a couple of times during Fringe, trying to collect my thoughts and decide how to rate it. For its originality, ideas, and the time that has clearly gone into the show, it gets 4 stars from me.
For this and more shows from C ARTS, go here.