Theatre
When Mountains Meet: A Musical Journey From The Highlands To The Himalayas To Find A Lost Father
The Studio, Edinburgh
Neil Cooper
Four stars
The atmosphere of a cross cultural ceilidh fills the room as the audience huddle in around cabaret tables for fiddle player Anne Wood’s autobiographical musical storytelling meditation on what happened when she went in search of the father she never knew existed. As Wood leads a band that also features sitar player Rakae Jamil, harpist Mary Macmaster and percussionist Rick Wilson, the fusion of folk traditions that emerges makes for a toe tapping curtain raiser.
Home is a stone’s throw away twice over in Wood’s resultant getting of wisdom, as she travels from the Scottish Highlands to Pakistan. Here, her newly discovered father wears Pringle sweaters and tweeds while she witnesses poverty and misogyny close up before finding salvation in the wide-open spaces of the Himalayas.
All this is made flesh in Kath Burlinson and Niloo-Far Khan’s co-production by a trio of storytellers - Iman Aktar, Hassan Javed and Jamie Zubairi - who move amongst the audience, introducing them to the delights of tea, confectionary and paper planes. They double up too as Wood’s father, step brother and, in Aktar’s case, as Wood’s younger, twentysomething self, with the real Wood making occasional interjections.
As scripted by Burlinson, with Wood’s own compositions driving the show, the result is a delicious interactive multi cultural stew, in which Wood shows off the roots of her back catalogue of internationalist musical adventures playing with the likes of the Cauld Blast Orchestra, The Raincoats and more. Ali Maclaurin and digital designer Aqsa Arif’s simple rendering of the mountains makes for a genuine immersive experience.
Produced by The Authentic Artist Collective and musical theatre specialists KT Producing, Wood’s story is a remarkable one that has waited more than three decades to be told. This sharing of that story is by turns generous, charming and at times brutally honest as much as it is affectionate in a quest for enlightenment brought to irresistible rousing life.
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