Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, 1984
Dumb Show is a standalone work, as well as part of Head and Two Tails
Its text is a rewrite of ‘Dame Sirith and the Weeping Bitch’, whipped into shape by my colleague, David Hirst, at Birmingham University’s Drama Department.
‘Foxed’ tells in comic-strip fashion, another Renard fable; hard to forget Stravinsky – however, this version has a well with two buckets and despite the sounds made, my characters are not animals but people drawn from the 30’s world of the American movie. So: Fox is a young, fast-on-his-feet gangster, Wolf is a gigolo, Cock is a pimp, and his hens are women of easy virtue.
Dumb Show performance
Written specifically for the music theatre group Vocem and especially for the singer/dancer/actors Alan Belk and Fran Lynch.
'Dumb Show' is radical in my output of music theatre. The Anglo-Saxon poems are drawn from “The Riddles of the Exeter Book” and reveal a dream world of resemblances and crossed identities, full of shapes unknown, surreal and enchanted. I was reminded forcibly of the painter Magritte: a man with one eye and twelve hundred heads, a bird that sings through her wriggling foot, a cock-like Christ, an onion and a key pushing and throbbing for attention “full under shirt”. Of the ninety or so riddles I chose six: urine, loom-shuttle, key, mimic sing-bird, rune-maker, and onion. In re-creating the warmth, wit, bawdy fantasy, magic and joy, I’ve tried to create something very new out of something very old.
Rune-maker is delivered in modern English and tells of the magic of words that heal separation. The remainder are delivered in Anglo-Saxon.
No matter: the vocal qualities and specific choreographed actions render meanings clear enough.
Dumb Show is performed as if in split-screen with the performers each tied to a square grid 8’ x 8’. The upstage percussionist/puppet master plays dance-band kit and his stick actions are coordinated with the activities on stage.