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Award-winning writer Oliver Mol takes to the stage to tell a story of failure, recovery and an endless migraine. Summary
Rating
Excellent
Tormented by an excruciating 10-month long migraine, a 29-year old man is about to tip over the edge. In a moment of despair, he’s got to choose between jumping in front of a train or calling his family to seek help. Fortunately, he chooses the latter and his mother goes to his rescue, listening to him, giving him a hug or just watching him cry. The story that follows is his bumpy recovery. How he learned to embrace failure, look ahead and find relief in working for the train company.
Making his stage debut with this self-penned monologue is Sydney-based writer Oliver Mol. He experienced chronic pain first-hand, right after the release of his first book Lion Attack. The account of his slow journey towards recovery and flashbacks of those long ten months are presented with a unique narrative style. The language is vivid, the words are carefully picked and intentionally left alone to hang before longer pauses or delivered slowly to charge every syllable with meaning.
Mol owns the stage as much as he owns his script. His presence before us is ever so natural. If we see him showing nerves, we know they’re not because he isn’t used to talk in front of an audience, but because he’s touching deeply personal matters, opening up to the intimate details of his innermost self.
To focus the attention onto the story, rather than the narrator, the performance is completed with music by Thomas Gray & Liam Ebbs, Seekae and Nils Frahm, amongst others. On the background, Kat Chellos’s beautiful visuals go from a range of acid-coloured shapes and lines to the railway tracks filmed from a train in movement.
Train Lord is an honest look into the circumstances surrounding us and how these can change suddenly to affect our lives. Far too often beyond our control, all we can do to survive is by accepting things for what they are, adjusting and being prepared for everything to go up in the air as soon as we are making sense of it all.
Written and Presented By: Oliver Mol
Booking Link: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/train-lord-af2020
Booking Until: 29 February 2020
