Songs from the Last Page
Dundee Rep Theatre - 22/09/23
Gareth Williams, singer/songwriter/piano | Emma Jane Lloyd, violin | Justyna Jablonska, cello
Irish composer and singer/songwriter Gareth Williams, whose curiosity-driven creativity has given us conscience-provoking opera and musical theatre, had a curious idea. The special innermost feeling that a reader experiences on the last page of a book that has made a deep impression, the reluctance to let go of the last paragraph whose words have evoked a recognition of profound truth and a validation of feeling: could that be captured in song? Focussing entirely on Scottish literature, he began to select such passages and set them in a chamber/popular fusion style, for voice and piano trio. The project became a tour of libraries, book festivals and performance spaces, with performances and workshops all over Scotland, including this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. As the tour reached its own last page, Dundee Rep Theatre was the intimate venue for an hour-long programme on Friday 22nd September.
Gareth himself was the vocalist, seated side-on to an upright piano, a low table holding a pile of 12 books, their spines facing the audience. Beside that lay an open case. Capable string players Emma Jane Lloyd (violin, not Aisling O’Dea as advertised) and Justyna Jablonska (cello) completed the piano trio instrumental line-up. Gareth introduced the Last Page conceit and invited the audience to ‘wallow’ in the experience of clinging to the beauty of the words through the hook of the music. Then, one by one, he took a book from the pile, introduced it, read from its last page, dropped it into the open case and then the musicians performed the song, set verbatim from the quotation. Simple really.
Simple but extraordinarily effective. From the first song, from the last page of Ali Smith’s ‘How to Be Both’, through Alasdair Gray’s ‘Lanark’ and on through a host of magical quotations, there was an unexpected sense of cumulative recognition, realisation, revelation and enlightenment, the more wistful or melancholy the text the more deliciously bittersweet its musical illumination.
Some musical moments were particularly memorable. The hammering out of the rhythm of the squawky words of Captain Flint, ‘pieces of eight’, as Jim Hawkins tells of his recurring nightmare on his return from the ‘accursed’ ‘Treasure Island’, was one. The gentle but inexorable passage of time that erases Wendy’s memory and recognition of Peter Pan, so that when he does return, she sees only a layer of dust on her old toybox, ticking away on the strings pizzicato: that was another. The music for Jackie Kay’s ‘Pink House’, a short story from the ‘Reality, Reality’ collection, perfectly caught the tranquillity of not hope, not even faith, but certainty that one is at long last in the right place.
Sometimes the words had their own music and resonance, but the music still heightened their impact, like those from Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s ‘Sunset Song’, Ely Percy’s ‘Duck Feet’, Ross Sayers’ ‘Sonny and Me’ and James Robertson’s ‘News of the Dead.
To conclude, Gareth invited us all to capture a Last Page by daring to sing it. And, you know, it would be rude not to. This show was a gem. Full marks from me.