Review: This Is Memorial Device, Riverside Studios

Review: This Is Memorial Device, Riverside Studios

Summary

Rating

60

Good

Graham Eatough’s adaptation of David Keenan’s cult classic, This Is Memorial Device, captures the intense feelings conjured by the book and tells a poignant story the novel’s fans will love.

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan is a cult classic novel, beloved by those with a certain cross section of interests: alternative music, literary fiction and Scotland. As a big fan,  I had to, along with I can imagine every other Memorial Device fan in London, attend Graham Eatough’s stage adaptation at Riverside Studios starring Paul Higgins.

The novel is a fragmented oral history of the post-punk scene in the small Scottish town of Airdrie. It charts the strange lives of the unusual characters in this place. The core of the story is the greatest band no one has ever heard of: Memorial Device.

Eatough’s adaptation captures the spirit of the book, turning the sprawling oral history into a more focused presentation, as if the audience were attending a lecture on Memorial Device that was as unconventional as its subject. This show benefited from a tight 90-minute runtime, and this more focused approach zooms in on the band itself.

The quiet intensity of Higgins’s performance captures the passion of music fandom. His earnest monologues about the importance of Memorial Device bring to life the huge significance a band can have for their fans.

What the show lacked was the universal relevance of this story. Although it addressed universal themes – such as the strange beauty of a rundown small town, the power of music and self-expression – it did not convey why this novel captures these themes so well. This is partly because we remain at a distance from the characters. Higgins plays Ross Raymond, one of the oral history’s compilers, but there is not much insight into him as a person. The members of Memorial Device remain distant, iconic, without getting under their skin; with the noted exception of frontman Lukas Black, who is explored in detail.

Despite this, I felt a deep connection to the story. This adaption is poignant and captures the sad and beautiful nature of failed greatness that permeates alternative music. The greatest bands, Joy Division, Nirvana, Memorial Device, are legendary for having their stories cut short. What could have happened? Are they more beautiful as they are?

Eatough uses mixed media well. Recordings of interviews with other characters are projected behind Higgins, along with photographs and silent grey footage of post-industrial Scotland. Haunting minimalist music is deployed well, and I could believe that I was finally hearing Memorial Device. Music related props – guitars, LPs, cassettes, etc. – are scattered around the stage, creating the sense of a fan’s collection or a gig or a rehearsal.

This all captures the uncanny element of the novel: Mannequins stand in for the band members, which is eerie, and nods to an especially strange chapter in the book where mannequins take on a life of their own.

This show is perfect for fans of Keenan’s novel. It is a powerful adaptation that captures the intense feelings the book provokes. If you love the book, as I do, you will find this show profoundly moving. If you are not a fan of this show, or the mythmaking within alternative music, then the full impact of this story may be lost on you.

I left feeling moved and that a book that I loved had been successfully brought to life, but I also wanted something more, something that would have elevated the feelings the book conjured in me to be universal truths, accessible to people who did not already love this strange novel.

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Adapted and directed by: Graham Eatough
Based on the book by: David Keenan
Set and costume design by: Anna Orton
Music by: Stephen Pastel and Gavin Thomson
Lighting design by: Nigel Edwards
Sound design by: Gavin Thomson
Video design by: Martin Clark
Movement direction by: Kally Lloyd Jones
Associate design by: Zephyr Liddell
Produced by: Neil Murray and Callum Smith

This Is Memorial Device plays at Riverside Studios until 11 May. Further information and bookings available here.