EIF: ‘Blood and Gold’

Lyceum Studio - 12/08/22

 Storytelling twice told. In other words, it’s stories about stories. Mara starts in Edinburgh with Frederick Douglass, the anti-slavery campaigner, visiting here in 1846, then she briefly mentions a recent racist murder on our streets. She suggests that our culture is awry and part of the cause is that we have lost touch with stories. She asks the audience for their favourite tales and then launches into her own. Her approach is not beginning-middle-and-end, rather one story melds into the next: a child is born, a woman runs away, a monster emerges, a border is crossed - from each event springs a new story-line. It’s lively and imaginative, but dream-like; I find the lack of cohesive plot-line and the rapid shifts hinder me from getting fully involved. 

Mara Menzies, as her name and looks suggest, has a mixed Scottish-Kenyan background. She brings her tales to life with flowing movement, a wide-ranging voice and an underlying sense of humour. Overall, she’s charming and friendly, but her best moments are as the evil Sandman. The lights go down, the soundtrack hisses and plops as she croaks and crouches, staring directly into the eyes of one audience member after another. 

The title Blood and Gold led me to expect something of slavery, colonial exploitation, imperial domination. There are hints of this, but the worst the colonials get up to is telling more stories, this time from the Bible. One of the liveliest moments is improvised from an audience member naming pizza as a favourite food. We get a detailed account, spoken and mimed, of the preparation: picking the tomatoes, chopping the herbs, grinding the grain, kneading the dough. Not traditional Africa (perhaps a different kind of exploitation). She almost made me want to eat pizza.