The first thing you are aware of is the noise. It sounds both familiar and strange, like the effort of 1,000 insect wings flapping. Then you suddenly realise what it is: the sound of hundreds of feet of sticky tape being unwound.
Improbable Theatre has already explored the possibilities of sticky tape as a design tool in 70 Hill Lane, and now they transfer the skills learned there to the big outdoors. The sheer scale of this piece is thrilling. It is like watching somebody build the pyramids or the Eiffel Tower, although in Saturday night's high winds, perhaps the leaning tower of Pisa would be more like it. Fragility is one of the keynotes of the evening.
There are plenty of crowd-pleasing fireworks, but what sets this apart from mere spectacle is metaphor. The sticky tape edifice miraculously rises from the ground but the human effort involved is incredible. It sways against the night sky, ethereal, beautiful and mysterious, its top looking like an exquisite spun sugar cap. Thirty minutes later, it is gone, destroyed in a blaze of gunpowder, shooting stars and Catherine wheels. All that effort for nothing. It makes humans seem like mayflies or the delicate blue-winged insect that flies inside the sticky tape tower, beating her wings desperately against its sides.
There is wit at work here, too: at one point the tower is transformed into an incendiary Big Ben, time destroying all in its path. Improbable has also learned the lesson that this kind of large outdoor event requires a very strong element of secular ritual and magic. Figures move across the landscape conjuring fire, the loudspeakers blare out stirring music of the kind that makes religion or fascism seem attractive, the big bangs are cleverly spaced against quieter more reflective moments. You would think that Improbable had been making outdoor theatre for years.
At the end, the tower blazes and collapses. Balloons drift lazily across the night sky like little bubbles or like the O-gape of surprise that your mouth makes when you've just witnessed something amazing and quite unexpected.
Related links:
17.03.2001: Spirit
04.05.1999: Beautiful dreamers
