Lecture Notes on a Death Scene – review

Analogue 's intriguing and unsettling one-to-one piece is a theatrical riddle, a game that takes you into a dark forest of possibilities, along many paths, with many possible destinations. Given a brief list of instructions, you slip on a hoodie, then follow a white line into a darkened space to take your place in a leather armchair. The 30 minutes that follow have a dream-like quality, offering multiple viewpoints and ever-branching stories. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges 's story The Garden of Forking Paths , this crafty little piece works on several narrative levels simultaneously. There is no single lived reality: you are the theatregoer sitting in the chair, but you are also the writer, a passenger in a taxi, a driver, as well as lecturer and student, victim and murderer. You hurtle towards yourself, at one point imprisoned, as if in a mirror, and find yourself bereaved of all sense of self. There are plenty of mirrors and much sleight of hand and mind. You might catch a glimpse of someone through a bullethole from a bullet not yet fired; catch yourself in the headlights of a speeding car; open a blue envelope to discover that the future has already happened; take a telephone call. The show explores the illusion of choice and cleverly suggests, through tiny shifts of perspective and ways of seeing, that our picture of the world is nothing but a conjuring trick. We think we are in control and know the complete jigsaw, but we have only a single piece of it. A little bit creepy, and rather fascinating.