The Encounter (Complicite)

Yes, I saw this Sunday afternoon (thank goodness the Barbican still does Sundays), and it's astounding, and Simon McBurney is a wildman!

Basically, there's a metal head on a pike on stage, which is actually a binaural microphone, meaning that wherever McBurney is in relation to that head, it sounds in your ears that that's where he is in relation to your head.

So when he breathes in it's ear, it's like he breathed in your ear, and your ear actually heats up in psychosomatic response to this person breathing in your ear lol.

Anyway, McBurney demonstrates his technology, which includes a loop pedal, so he can loop any sounds he makes and create layers of sounds all around you. Then he tells a story.

McBurney tells us that most of reality is stories, even the UK itself is just a story we tell ourselves, as in fact there is no such thing as the UK, just people on a land telling each other stories about who does and who doesn't belong there, and what people must and must not do if they are there.

There are three layers to McBurney's story, which is as much about the process of storytelling as the story:

First, there is McBurney on stage acting like a foley artist, creating sounds which are made with surprising objects, and doing various accents better than anyone ever did accents. This is the Brechtian part of the show, the part that deconstructs what he is doing even as he is doing it;

Second, there is the story of McBurney preparing to tell this story one year ago, constantly interrupted by his 5 year old daughter (who is now 6), as he sets out to construct this show. She wants him to read her a story, wouldn't you know it, and her wanting that story one year ago becomes a story for us in the present;

Third, there is the main substance of the story, which McBurney tell us, and not his daughter, for it is far too thrilling and scary a story for a 5 year old. It is the true story of an American journalist, Loren McIntyre, who got lost in the Amazon rainforest with the Mayoruna, a Brazilian tribe whose language he could not speak, and upon whose charity his survival depended.

This third story is so immediate and so gripping that no film I have seen about the Amazon even comes close to the visceral impact this had on me. I realised that if I closed my eyes, the show might be even more gripping, but I didn't because I trusted that McBurney had a reason for wanting to tell the first and second stories, and I didn't want to shut them out. McBurney performs the bejesus out of this show, and coupled with the astonishingly intimate technology and foley effects, this show can only be described as a trip: it is like taking LSD. At one point I even started hallucinating, thinking I saw McBurney's chest open up like a shark's mouth with enormous teeth (this did NOT happen). I haven't felt this way since I ingested a certain substance in college and thought I had no body and was just a floating head. All the fun (and fear) of drugs without the drugs.

McBurney's show is a revelation.

If I have a reservation, it is that McBurney quoted the science of time, that all instances exist at once and time is a circle, and seemed to be suggesting that we could experience that circle, that we could ourselves step outside of time, as he suggested the Mayoruna experienced time. Well, we can clearly warp our headspace to that effect, but since we are trapped by the four dimensions, no amount of trippiness will stop us aging and/or dying I'm afraid.

But that's a petty quibble. McBurney has so much to say about storytelling and reality, about culture and freedom, about our animal selves and our relation to our planet, about the bonds between every one of us. His themes are profound and meaningful, and they are laid over the most marvellous and thrilling trip you will experience in the theatre.

4.5 stars!

This is being live streamed on 1st March and will be avaliable until 6th

This actually makes me quite glad I haven't got tickets. ;-)

Parsley: "I have always found something massively overrated about McBurney"

Perhaps this may explain why the first hour of a solo show by him was not to your taste?

Well that's tipped me firmly into the 'must book' category.

Sold out. (

Cheaper than the £32 some of the returns were going for too. Thanks for the tip!

This is being live streamed tonight: www.complicite.org/live-stream.php
Wear headphones (I'm told.)

Enjoyed the live stream last night. Wore headphones as suggested. Made less of an impact than I think it would have done in the theatre but still enjoyable.

Just back from opening night in Oxford. This truly is a phenomenal piece of work. I was very very dubious about sitting in a theatre with headphones on looking at a sound booth - but it is a thrilling piece of pure theatre.

I don't give standing ovations lightly - but this deserved it. How he can sustain that performance for 5 or 6 shows in a week, I have no idea.

There are a handful of seats left in Oxford. Grab them. Now!

This is back at the barbican next year according to time out, between April-May. Onsale Nov

Went this afternoon. Totally agree with the previous post!

I thought this was marvellous. Reminded me of seeing Owen Pallet or Andrew Bird play live. But theatrical rather than musical.

I would watch it again tonight. And tomorrow. Probably the finest theatrical experience of the year. Will take a lot to better this.

(Also, I now know that it Parsley hates a play, I am likely to love it. So that’s a useful calibration.)