Mayfield, ManchesterAlthough presented immaculately, Heiner Goebbel´s slow-moving over-extended piece feels indulgent rather than original In what was formerly an Edwardian railway station, a man manoeuvres a huge length of tubing, like a giant didgeridoo, and positions it in front of the audience. To one side, an ondes martenot player begins drawing fragile sounds from her instrument as other performers start to sort through drop-cloths and pieces of scenery strewn across the performance area. Meanwhile a network of pulses - metallic, industrial sounds - starts to build around them. As if by stealth, Heiner Goebbels´ latest work, Everything That Happened and Would Happen, gets under way.Over the last quarter century, Goebbels has worked at the boundaries of several art forms. He made his name internationally with pieces that blurred the distinction between concert music and music theatre, but increasingly his richly allusive mixtures of sounds, texts and visuals have moved in the direction of performance art and installations; his last new work to be seen in the UK, Stifters Dinge, did not involve any live performers at all. Continue reading...
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