The piece begins promisingly enough - performer
Fergus Rougier crawls onto the stage covered by a
blue sheet as lights flash and thunder rumbles, representing, no doubt, a
storm.His entrance was quite
interesting visually, and at this point I thought maybe it was going to be
some way out modern dance piece, not exactly my usual fare but potentially
interesting. Next was a song describing why Crusoe chose to live a life of adventure.Not
much of a song, I thought, and rather too long, but still things might get
more interesting.What
followed was the story of Robinson Crusoe told with, as the playbill put it "physical
storytelling, stylized movement and song."Early on in the story, Crusoe finds an
accordion in the shipwreck and soon after sings a song about his not having
chosen to be born. Again not much of a song, but now maybe at least some sort
of musical existential drama might possibly take shape.But sadly, this was not to be. More "stylized
movement" followed, detailing another episode in the story, followed by
another song which didn't sound much different from the previous ones,
followed by more "stylized movement", not much different from
earlier movement and so on.Somewhere
in the middle of all this, his accordion playing began to strike me as being
rather mediocre and his performance, in general, self-indulgent and more than
a little narcissistic.Very soon
after I totally lost interest, never to regain it.
