Theatre Corsair opens its doors to a space that is transformed seamlessly into an apartment where the lives of three women collide in this site-specific performance of The Dead Memory House.
We are immediately welcomed into the space as guests of a low-key house party where assorted shapes of savoury biscuit snacks are poured into a bowl and offered around, along with party rings. Scraps of paper and pencils are distributed like in a game of charades, but we are encouraged to scribble down a memory - instead of film or book titles - and place it in a jam jar, snippets of our lives anonymously added to the set. But this exercise comes to a dead-end and nothing further comes of it.
The odd dance sequences took away from this element of shared experience as they felt awkwardly worked into the piece as an experimental mode of expression; they ultimately detracted from the otherwise absorbing union between audience and performer. These sequences became too contrived and made the performance feel paradoxically unnatural given the successful atmosphere initially created.
Their attention to detail in the set design is impressive, but I longed for the freedom to explore the space and, although this wasn't exactly discouraged, it wasn't encouraged either. In such a small space the audience are frightened of getting in the way of the cast’s movements and so tend to group around the edges. The performance is most effective when observing their behaviour through a shifting perspective from one room into another and the door frames provided a brilliant porthole for this. ‘The Dead Memory House is a collision of their lives and your experiences’ and I certainly felt very comfortable in the space they had created. However, as audience members our presence went largely unnoticed as the experience progressed, simply leaving behind a trace of memories in jam jars that are quickly shelved.
My instinct when watching the show was that it would work better as a durational piece, where the audience are free to pop in and out all day, which certainly requires more of the cast. As it is, their character relationships felt underdeveloped. At times it seemed as if we are witnessing three separate lives, ghosts of the women who once lived in this flat.
This was an applause defying show: the actors put on their coats and walked out of the flat, leaving the audience abandoned in their wake to silently saunter back out onto the streets of Edinburgh, leaving the Dead Memory House behind as if they too had just left their own home rather than a show. The piece has excellent foundations and this show is a brilliant example of how a space can be performative in itself.
