Review: The Lamplighter's Lament, Bedlam Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

A bearded Victorian figure in a top-hat, overcoat tails swishing behind him, strides along a road. From a pocket of his three-piece suit, he plucks an immaterial ember of light, winds back his arm and throws it upwards, illuminating a tiny patch of the world from the streetlamp above. An empty existence punctuated by an infinite task: switching on, switching off, switching on...

Between dusk and dawn, he sleepwalks to the sea, awaking with soggy socks and cold feet. Between dawn and dusk, he wallows in gloom, haunted by memories of a wife lost to its waves.

As a company, Gomito’s modus operandi is built on their absolute faith in the magic of theatre. True to form, The Lamplighter’s Lament is a fragile, homespun piece composed of images that shatter at the first spark of cynicism. However, here they keep the mechanics just about concealed enough to stave off such concerns.

Structurally, The Lamplighter’s Lament is a string of moments half-glimpsed, shady impressions in the strictly rationed light. As such, it functions like a comic strip, leaving us to fill in the gaps and surviving intact as a result.

Of most interest is the touching exploration of emotional dissociation born of grief. The lamplighter moves through time without conscious exertion, as if cushioned by a caring world: clothes jump to his body, breakfast appears in his hand. He is there, but not there, until – following a visitation from his wife’s ghost – a coat hung up drops resolutely to the floor and reality returns sharply into focus.

The specifics of the narrative are, at times, too fuzzy and, as a whole, it is over-reliant on the mystery of the lamplighter’s fantastical powers, but such is the gentleness born of an atmospheric sound design and likeably soft performances that Gomito get away with it.

Yes, The Lamplighter’s Lament is guilty of the sort of sentimentality and slightness born of uninterrogated devised theatre, but it’s enchanting stuff nonetheless. Providing, of course, you allow it to be so.