REVUE DE PRESSE SIMON MCBURNEY The Encounter 08 – 12.09.2015 Edinburgh: The Encounter, International Conference Centre http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/edinburgh-the... Theatre Expat In Switzerland? £50k+ Savings? Try A Free Review To Show You The Best Interest Rates! Theatre / What to See WHAT TO SEE Edinburgh: The Encounter, International Conference Centre, review: 'spellbinding' share THE ENCOUNTER IS ONE OF THE EARLY HITS OF THE EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL CREDIT: A. PHILLIPSON/LIVEPIX BB y DDoommiinniicc CCaavveennddiisshh THEATRE CRITIC 9 AUGUST 2015 • 2:08PM share 1 sur 6 27.08.15 12:08 Edinburgh: The Encounter, International Conference Centre http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/edinburgh-the... You are alone in the dense, almost inaccessible Amazon region of Brazil, 400 miles from "civilisation". The aim is to take photographs of an elusive, barely contacted tribes-people called the Mayoruna – to show the world what they look like. And, amazingly, you strike gold. There, suddenly, some of them are. You follow them, snapping as you go – failing, unlike Hansel and Gretel, to leave a trail behind you. The story of the American photographer Loren McIntyre’s incredible 1969 encounter with “the cat people” (so named because of the whisker-like palm-spines adorning their lips and noses) is the stuff of a twisting, turning, thoroughly engrossing fairytale. And in re-telling it, in this brilliant solo show mounted by his much-travelled company Complicite, Simon McBurney adopts a high-tech bedside manner that places the audience in the role of wide-eyed – or should that be wide-eared? – children. Clipped to every seat in the large, functional theatre suite at the International Conference Centre is a set of headphones. What you hear has the intimacy of someone whispering in your ears, as if snuggled up beside you. But, more than that, thanks to an array of sonic gadgetry, at the centre of which stands a ‘binaural’ pick-up device, mounted on a mannequin human head, the effect is fully immersive – so that you hear sounds from all sides, conjured with disconcerting pinpoint precision. Close your eyes, and you can believe you’re in a far-flung corner of the world – gnats and mosquitoes buzzing skin-pricklingly close, birds hooting in the trees. Keep them open, as you are mainly bound to, and you are aware of McBurney – scruffy in jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap – busily creating this perturbing, polyphonic paradise. He partly, often amiably and entertainingly, chats in his own voice, confiding details about his inquisitive daughter and domestic life (samples of which we hear). He switches too – by putting on an accent, and talking into a pitch-lowering microphone – into McIntyre’s growly baritone. And with the help of a backstage team and looper-pedals, McBurney the magician can turn the sloshing of a water bottle into the lapping sound of a river; he can scrunch old VHS tape to evoke a trek through humid undergrowth; he transforms a crisp-packet crackle into a roaring fire. Such is the power of imagination that we are conscious of the artifice but can lose ourselves, like McIntyre, in this alien terrain. We are miles away, yet somehow connected. Through this mesmerising theatrical trickery, McBurney captures the metaphysical spirit – as well as the pulse-quickening heart – of the experience, which was recorded in the 1991 factional novel Amazon Beaming by the Romanian Petru Popescu. McIntyre, who died in 2003, maintained that he developed the ability to communicate telepathically – “beam” – with certain of the Mayoruna, and in living among them entered a different state of mind, and time. Somehow, over two hours that leave its charismatic star exhausted and the audience elated, we too are taken into a synapse-altering space, floating free of modernity’s plastic trappings. Does that sound like a far-fetched claim? Honestly, with this head-turning, spellbinding show, hearing is believing. 2 sur 6 27.08.15 12:08 ‘The Encounter’ Review: Edinburgh International Festival Pr... http://variety.com/2015/legit/reviews/the-encounter-edinburgh... Edinburgh Theater Review: Complicite’s ‘The Encounter’ AUGUST 10, 2015 | 08:48AM PT ROBBIE JACK Matt Trueman (http://variety.com/author/matt-trueman/) Leaping off from Petru Popescu’s book “Amazon Beaming,” an account of an American photographer’s encounter with an indigenous tribe, Si- mon McBurney (http://variety.com/t/simon-mcburney/)’s solo show for his company Complicite (http://variety.com/t/complicite/) is quite extraordinary: a profound meditation on our relationship to time and a captivating piece of high-definition storytelling. “The Encounter,” premiering as part of the Edinburgh International Festival (http://vari- ety.com/t/edinburgh-international-festival/) and moving to London’s Barbican in February, is theater that materializes out of next to nothing, with one of the world’s great theatermakers — and theater thinkers — working right on the cutting edge of his art-form to scintillating effect. McBurney has long been fascinated by the presence of the past. (His father was a renowned archaeologist.) In “Mnemonic” (2003), he recounted the discovery of Ötzi, a 5,500 year-old corpse found preserved in the Alps. “The Encounter”1 sur 4 seeks out Ötzi’s living counterparts: the Mayoruna tribe, living 27.08.15 12:06 isolated in the Amazon rainforest. McBurney‘The Encounter’ stands Review: on a Edinburgh large soundstage, International Festivalits back Pr... wall patternedhttp://variety.com/2015/legit/reviews/the-encounter-edinburgh... with foam soundproofing. There’s a desk with a couple of microphones and, center stage, a head on a stick: a binaural microphone that records sound in space. When he whispers into its left ear, we in the audience, wearing headphones, feel his presence at our left shoulder. Gareth Fry’s design piles up layers of sounds — recorded interviews, foley effects, a soundscape of McBurney’s home study. The effect is a soundcloud of a process, in which fact and fiction, past and present, research and production intermingle, spinning a story out of the air. One microphone drops McBurney’s voice a register. Adopting a slow American accent, he becomes Loren McIntyre, the American photojournalist who, in 1969, successfully located the Mayoruna people. In doing so, McIntyre dropped out of time. Having failed to mark a route back to civilization, he became marooned amid 400 square miles of dense, Brazilian rainforest. With no shared language and suspicion growing among the tribe, his survival hangs in the balance, dependent on the protection of its headman, whom he nicknames Barnacles. In time, the two men strike up a connection, apparently telepathic. It’s a story told with vivid precision, both linguistic and theatrical. McBurney flies over the Amazon with a bamboo stick for a plane. He takes us right into the rainforest, looping his own animal whoops and insectoid croaks as he circles the stage, rustling plastic for leaves underfoot. The head-mic becomes the shamanic headman. It’s a deeply immersive experience, completely transporting. You seem to fall out of time with McIntyre and McBurney, rapt by this gripping thriller. Time swirls through the whole piece: the modernity encroaching on and threatening Mayorunan existence, photographs that attempt to pause the present, sound recordings that bring back the past. It explores the psychology of time — the need to stay connected to it and the urge to surpass or escape it — as well as the philosophy. “More than one time is possible,” says a scientist in a recorded interview. McBurney makes it so. History exists in our heads just as this show does. It’s a kind of telepathy in itself; McBurney’s voice transmitting direct to our brains. The show’s form doesn’t just echo its content, it elucidates it. All this technology serves the same primitive, human urges: the need to communicate, the itch to transcend time. Where Mayorunae lick frogs and dance for hours, we disappear into our 2 sur 4 27.08.15 12:06 smartphones. What‘The Encounter’ elevates Review:this story Edinburgh — a gripping International adventure Festival Pr...in its own righthttp://variety.com/2015/legit/reviews/the-encounter-edinburgh... — is that it so matters to McBurney. It’s born of a burning question: whether we need all this stuff; whether the gadgets and comforts are worth the intrusions into our lives and relationships; whether the march of materialism is worth everything it eradicates. He takes a hammer to his tech desk, then stops. Scattered around the stage are water bottles — exactly what the parched McIntyre needs to survive, exactly what McBurney needs to calm down. This is a piece that asks about the price of progress, but never forgets the possibilities. Sensational. Edinburgh Theater Review: Complicite's 'The Encounter' Edinburgh International Conference Center, Edinburgh International Festival; 480 seats; £32 ($50) top. Opened Aug. 8, 2015. Reviewed Aug. 9. Running time: 2 HOURS. Production A Complicite production of a play in one act by Simon McBurney. Creative Written by Simon McBurney; Directed by Simon McBurney and Kirsty Housley. Design, Michael Levine; lighting, Paul Anderson; sound, Gareth Fry; projection, Will Duke. Cast Simon McBurney. Want to read more articles like this one? SUBSCRIBE TO VARIETY TO- DAY (http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=126980977& iu=/3782/Variety_CM/below-tags/ros). by Taboola (http://www.taboola.com/en/popup?template=colorbox&taboola_utm_source=pmc-variety&taboola_utm_medium=bytaboola&tabool