[terminal pharmacy]

Why play music? For a soundtrack to your life; for fun, to sing and dance to; or because a giant teddy bear has seized your head, dragged you to a drum kit and forced you to start playing? The Border Project's inventive show features many such bizarre reflections on music and the imagery associated with it.

Dealing with the social impact of MTV on our experience of music, the production comprises new pieces of music inspired by the performers' favourite songs. The cast attempted to explain their significance in a confessional sequence of overlapping voices, each story broken up, as if the audience were flicking through television channels. Each new track was interpreted with pre-recorded video and photography, live singing and dancing, and surprising stagecraft.

Director Haren also designed the basic white set with three nesting frames, wheeled around to establish different scenes. The innovative lighting served the music well: two large profile lights on cables were manually twisted and spun, while lamps in buckets were rhythmically flung around, enhancing the surreal and dangerous atmosphere.

Cameron Goodall, in his wish-fulfilment sequence, had explained how mastering Sweet Child Of Mine on the guitar made him cool at school. Now taking the solo, breaking out of the frames with dancers representing different musical genres, he lived out his guitar-god fantasies.

A narrative of passion between a schoolboy and his teacher ended with the boy pinned against a screen, wounded with animated arrows like St Sebastian, "roadies" doubling as backing dancers. The Reckoning's Naked inspired a Michel Gondry style dance routine with anxious-faced performers moving mechanically, like piano keys.

Alirio Zavarce was inspired by Tracy Chapman's Fast Car: despite the fact that the energetic musicians were playing right on the stage, all attention was definitely focused on the dancers. They performed within a large frame, breaking through at the end when the car journey ended in a crash. Zavarce was also compelling as Grimmel the irrepressible dancer in the twisted story sequence inspired by REM's The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite.

Jeff Buckley's Last Goodbye inspired a minimal performance: Katherine Fyffe placed herself neutrally in front of a screen playing a video of a party in reverse, the lights flickering across her within the frame, yet outside the action.
Presented by the Festival Centre's INSPACE program, this is a challenging and exciting combination of musical interpretations.

Rosie Clarke