This one-man tour de force from Canadian artist Bremner Fletcher was produced earlier this year at the Edinburgh Fringe, and I am reviewing it based on a video capture of an earlier performance.
The setting is a ruined theatre. The actor on the dark stage is alone; his colleagues gone, arrested, or worse, with nothing but their torn costumes remaining.
Into the chaos, the actor with a clown face, bow tie, and buttonhole offers resistance and a memorial to an unsettling situation as he dresses up for each of their personalities.
It’s a powerful, subversive, and disturbing cabaret with a strong political heart. Fletcher’s actor brings back each of his fellows through song (9 of them, including a period-sounding Sondheim), celebrating their differences and talents.
It’s a loud, intense, and bravura show, tinged with sadness and perhaps insanity, funny and physical.
How and why is this man the one left behind when everyone else has been taken, “one by one”?
Is he here to stand testament to those who are lost, or is he a narrator making up his own story? Fletcher is a dynamic performer who easily captures our interest, spotlighted and dangerous.
Singing Into The Dark is nostalgia tinged with desperation. It suggests we are in 1933, at the point the Nazi regime began to rise and snuff out the carefree and decadent in theatre and cabaret. It doesn’t make that plain, but a feeling in the set and costume takes us there.
Now, Fletcher’s website references the recent devastation inflicted on the arts in Kyiv, Ukraine, making this show a demonstration of solidarity with artists facing oppression and censorship.
Hopes, dreams, and engagement come together in this surprising, shapeshifting, and energetic show.
I found myself thinking back to Michael Trauffer’s Fabulett 1933, which covered similar ground, and the physical theatre work of Steven Berkoff and Complicité.
At a glance, there is also some suggestion of the masks that made up the face of Scaramouche Jones.
Singing Into The Dark is bleakly relevant to the world we currently live in, and a warning to those who may find it easier (or saner) to walk away into the shadows. A beautiful and inspiring ending, too.
4 stars.
Read my interview with Bremner Fletcher from this year’s Fringe.