Conceived,
written and performed by Dylan Tighe, Record explores the
pathologization of mental illness through a performance wrought with pain and
emotion. The show is framed as an “alternative opera” and the quotation of Roland
Barthes and Friedrech Nietzche at the play’s start both position the show as a
ground-breaking defiance of theatrical norms. In many ways, Tighe’s
autobiographical discussion of the medicalization of depression and bipolar
disorder certainly challenge the boundaries of performance. Through live music,
re-lived moments, and film clips, Tighe reveals the agony, alienation and
humiliation inherent to his experience of coping with bipolar disorder. Tighe’s
work is ambitious yet ambiguous and the blurring of the line between
performance and reality produces a deeply moving and complicated performance.
Yet ultimately Tighe’s opera collapses upon itself, yielding an illegible and
uncomfortable experience for the tortured artist’s audience.
Tighe’s story is painful to watch and the songwriter-actor-director ensures
that his audience is deeply affected by his performance. His appeal to his
audience’s empathy is wildly anti-Brechtian, though he subversively utilizes
many techniques of the alienation-effect to catalyze an emotional response from
his audience. The first quarter-hour of the show is dedicated to making the
audience one with Dylan Tighe: he enters the stage with no introduction, the
house lights remain on for the majority of his exposition and he periodically
makes eye contact with members of the audience as he speaks. Through the videos
shown of his early acting career, Tighe literally exposes himself, emphatically
mimicking his demonstrated intent to expose himself as a vulnerable human, rather
than as performer or patient. The cumulative effect of his carefully laid-out
set-up is effective: through the projection of his medical records,
medications, dates, and family photos, Tighe destroys the barriers between
character and actor and performer and audience. The logical explanation of
Tighe’s background is quirky, witty and effective; the employment of several
cinematic conventions make the telling of his story meaningful and
entertaining.
Positioned as the re-lived harrowing experience of a man destroyed by mental
illness and the medical world, the performance of Record becomes a
haunting and devastating piece to watch. Tighe’s music lends itself beautifully
to live performance and the experience of watching the exposed and vulnerable
artist share his pain through live music against a backdrop of well-chosen,
impacting images is incredibly powerful. Tighe’s simplistic lyrics gain
significance in the context of Tighe’s lived emotional devastation that is
absent from his album. Additionally, the haunting voice of the nurse and the
fabulous skill of Tighe’s drummer make each song a glorious, devastating
emotional journey.
While the emotional depth of the piece stands out as the piece’s greatest and
perhaps only strength, the allusion to Hamlet in Record is also a
stroke of true brilliance that stands out in a piece that remains rather
one-note. The employment of the parallel between Tighe and the Prince of
Denmark’s experience of crushing emotional impotence is both insightful and
heartbreaking. As the ensemble and Tighe read through Act II, Scene ii of Hamlet,
the power of Shakespeare’s ability to convey the devastating nature of
depression transcends and illuminates Tighe’s inability to speak Hamlet’s
words. Enacted in Tighe’s dejected tone, we see the devastating trap of
depression in the coupling of the proclamation “what a piece of work is man!”
and the admission “and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man
delights not me: no, nor woman neither.” Trapped in a body and a mind seemingly
out of his control, both Tighe and Hamlet embody the crippling nature of mental
illness.
Yet, in spite of the emotional rawness of the performance, the failure of Record
to create any salient or satisfying meaning ultimately renders the piece at
best a disappointment for its audience. From the get-go, the line between
performance and reality introduces complicated questions. Dylan Tighe proposes
to tell his own story himself; yet the inescapability of his role as a working
performer, of the dynamic of the proscenium stage, and of the use of numerous
theatrical conventions reduces Record to a problematic paradox. The
set-up of Tighe’s story is elaborately choreographed and meticulously designed,
which creates a marked barrier between the real life of Dylan Tighe and his
performance of his life. In the context of this careful set-up, the intrusion
of technical glitches and incessant line issues detract from the aesthetic and
the tone of the piece. While the performers attempted to mask these mistakes
under the guise of the ‘reality’ of the play, the tension between performance
and reality hinder the ability of Record to utilize either mode of
communication. Instead, the show is left waffling in the superficiality of
performance and the ambiguity of reality.
Thematically, the conclusion of Record took an unusual and wildly
problematic turn. Again, the tension between reality and performance rendered
Tighe’s piece neither universal nor illuminating, but meaningless. Midway
through the show, Tighe and his nurse escape to his doctor’s summer house to be
surrounded by sunflowers, tennis courts and oranges. Through hypnosis, positive
feelings, and the ocean, Tighe’s nurse, clad in a bright monokini and squeezing
orange juice between her thighs, helps her patient find his inner light. In an
eruption of ecstatic determination, Tighe rebels against the medical world that
has destroyed his life and goes off of his medication. The play closes with
Tighe and his nurse embracing and kissing; the action continues as the audience
awkwardly exits while attempting to conceal its confusion and disillusionment.
Whether Tighe’s escape to this summer home is a fantasy, a joke or a reality is
unclear, which makes the ultimate meaning of the play illegible. At face value,
the excursion is superficial and frustratingly sexist: are we to believe that
only a babe with nice legs and a soothing voice can rescue someone suffering
from depression? This interpretation not only fails to address the devastating
impact mental illness has on relationships, but more importantly offers merely
a simplistic solution to a highly complicated issue. To give Tighe credit, his
escape could perhaps be understood as an allegory: perhaps the nurse represents
a positive force that Tighe must find within himself to fight his own mental
illness, a path that would reflect the suggestion of the medical expert quoted
several times during the piece. Yet in either case this portion of the
performance remains unclear and problematic.
Tighe’s performance of Record disappoints the audience it so desperately
seeks to impact. In promising catharsis for its viewers, the piece ultimately
offers a superficial and nearly offensive exploration of mental illness. Dylan
Tighe’s desperation to create and perform a powerful work blinds him to the
issues inherent to performing an individual whose identity represents an
experience shared by others. Perhaps if Tighe had managed to speak only for
himself or perhaps if he had performed a character with a name different than
his own, the piece would have been liberated from its manifold problems. Record
could have spoken for itself as a man’s expression of his struggle to cope with
crippling depression; Tighe’s gorgeous music, his clever use of technology and
narration and the fabulous lighting design of the production would have carried
the show. Unfortunately, Record was weighed down by its desire to say,
do and mean too much. In doing so, Tighe’s emotional masterpiece appeared merely
as an offensive display of narcissism.
~Emma Nicholls
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