Let’s see if I can write this without crying…
I was teaching an afternoon class in a language school last month and I heard, floating up from the street below, maybe from a shop or from a portable soundbox from a street act in Pavilion Gardens, a very familiar tune which stopped me mid sentence. I told my class why – that the music drifitng in from outside (Melodia Africana III by Ludovico Einaudi) was a track I had used in the theatre and it almost always make me cry when I try to explain what the show was about. The show was called Against the Odds and I co-wrote and directed it for Jade Blue, and it centres on a girl called Flora who is waiting for her father, Harry, to visit her for the first time in a few years. She is in a mental hopital and he has just been released from prison. Unknown to Flora, her grandfather, who hates her father, has forced him to make an undearable choice – either Harry must never see her again or he (the grandfather) will discontinue paying for the treatment she needs. We do not learn what Harry’s decsion is, but in the final image, as he tells Flora that everything will be OK, we see her crumble in despair. And now I’m crying…
While the story of Against the Odds is based on an incident in a novel Brooklyn Folkies by Paul Auster, there are aspects of it which come very close to my own experience and I can never explain the plot without welling up. We used a number of tracks by Ludovico Einaudi in the show. Einaudi’s simple piano melodies have a plaintive quality which can be either euphoric or tragic, and makes them perfect as backing for an understated performance.