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Exhausted Paint: The Death of Van Gogh

 
Richard Beck Review by Richard Beck 3 Published: 12 Aug 2025 theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall Show Dates: 1 Aug 2025-23 Aug 2025

Artifacts dangle from a spinning wheel that sits atop a pole and dominates the stage in Exhausted Paint: The Death of Van Gogh, by experimental US playwright Justin Maxwell at theSpace@Surgeons’ Hall and is the key to the structure of the solo show, directed by Penny Cole.

There is tremendous pace and abundant energy in this show

The opening and closing sections of the script are fixed. Between these, segments correspond to each hanging object, but they are not necessarily the same each day. The order of the passages is determined by Drew Stroud’s spin of the wheel. He then unhooks the prop and tells the related story.

In his own words, what follows is a “tilt-a-whirl, unrelenting dash through the life of Vincent.” The debate surrounding the artist’s mental condition comes through not just in the show’s content but also in Stroud’s performance. At times he is sane, rational and able to explain his feelings about life, art and the people he meets. In contrast, he can seem to be in a very different world. Van Gogh experienced at least eight major episodes characterised by anxiety, memory loss, partial paralysis and hallucinations. He was frequently hospitalised and famously cut off part of his left ear after a major disagreement with fellow artist Paul Gauguin – all part of several tumultuous relationships he had with artists in the avant-garde community he helped create. The show imparts a good measure of historical material.

Stroud animatedly romps through these events, also including Van Gogh’s problematic dealings with women, ranging from glamorous socialites to whores in brothels and sexually transmitted diseases. As Van Gogh wrote in an 1887 letter to his sister, “For my part, I still continually have the most impossible and highly unsuitable love affairs from which, as a rule, I emerge only with shame and disgrace.” Fortunately, he had the devotion of his brother to sustain him.

There is tremendous pace and abundant energy in this show – perhaps too much at times. Moments of quieter, calmer introspection would provide more variety in delivery for a performance that currently exists at a continuously frenetic level.

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The Blurb:

Join us for a tilt-a-whirl trip through the mind and letters of Vincent Van Gogh. A terrible spinning wheel controls the manic, blissful, bitter artist as he frantically relives the constant struggle and turbulence of his life. Disoriented, out of control, reeling from idea to idea, the soul-crushing, chaotic randomness of creation shapes a deep and dark vision of Van Gogh, a man who was so much more than a severed ear.