Martin Scorcese once said “Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions” and for me nothing could be more true of Javaad Alipoor’s much acclaimed fringe festival feature The Believers Are But Brothers. A play about political extremism, digital technology and male violence, it formed part of HOME’s Orbit Festival, a collection of innovative new work that seek to explore today’s world.
I must confess that I was bit of a Smiths fan in my youth. I remember purchasing the Japanese import EP on compact disc (yes I am that old) of the classic ‘This Charming Man’ and spending a whole weekend listening to every version on a loop. To this day I could still convince myself of retreating to a commune to ponder on the significance of the lyric “Why pamper life’s complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat”. I am not sure why I feel the need to confess, after all The Smiths and Morrissey are critically acclaimed. Yet, it is exactly that sentiment that Gary McNair so wonderfully taps into in his one man show ‘Letters to Morrissey’ at HOME.
I can close my eyes and still hear the baseline thumping, the monotonous sounds that accompany the spoken words, unrelenting, one after the other, delivered with ferocious ferocity at a speed that makes my brain struggle to keep up. It is incessant, persistent, unremitting, unyielding, remorseless, an undercurrent of words, sounds and light that is continually pushing me deeper under water, and as I come up for air, I am dragged back down, drowning in the myriad that is this bewildering concoction from Kieran Hurley. Heads Up.