it felt like a kiss – part one

I very nearly didn’t go to Manchester last week. The Sunday train service coupled with track repairs requiring replacement bus service between Stockport and Manchester seemed such a hurdle, but I’d paid for my ticket to ‘It Felt Like a Kiss‘ and I was reluctant to waste the money. I am so glad I made the effort.

Lots of people have been talking about the production: The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, and The Guardian. So too Music OMH and the Epoch Times. The Guardian, as is its want, tries to sum it all up in a slightly self-satisfied way. There is a snippet on the director’s blog on the BBC website, and, from today, the full documentary by Adam Curtis at the centre of the show is available on the BBC website. Perhaps the guests on the Culture Show put it best when they likened the show to a ghost train.

It’s a week now since I went to see it, and the crazy jumble of impressions and emotions has subsided into a more coherent view. Very few people read this blog, but even so, I haven’t felt right until now about describing the production in detail, because I didn’t want to spoil it for anyone, but the Festival finished yesterday, so I feel free to tell all.

The show is a promenade production through an empty office block in central Manchester that Punchdrunk have taken over temporarily. There are tight controls on how many people can enter at any time, with batches of ten people being dispatched at ten minute intervals after strict warnings about footwear, low lighting, flashing lights, uneven surfaces, nervous dispositions, pregnancy, heart conditions, not touching the stewards, no more toilets, and escape routes should you change your mind or in case of fire.

You ascend to the top floor in a tiny lift that requires two trips to ferry the group, so the first half wait nervously in the reddish gloom for the others to catch up. From that point on, it’s up to us to fumble our way firstly through a huge cut-out fairground clown mouth then along and round dark, twisting corridors of black walls and floors. The lighting levels really are low, so sometimes it’s not clear where you’re supposed to go, but we become accustomed to the context and stop feeling quite so ill at ease.

The introductory talk explained that the theme of the production is telling stories, particularly that of America when it thought it was the most powerful country in the world. But it also explained that when power wanes, the stories become fragmented. There will be a small cinema half-way through the building, with a film lasting about thirty-five minutes, and after that, well, who knows? There will be clues, apparently, which my fellow participants, all of whom are complete strangers to me, decide to interpret as an instruction to read all pieces of paper carefully in case there is vital evidence hidden away.

This is why it is taking audiences two hours to work their way through the production instead of the planned seventy-five minutes. For there are many pieces of paper – letters on desks, reports in filing cabinets, notes and scraps on tables. Punchdrunk have certainly been thorough. Each room we enter, separated by more dark, twisting corridors, is laid out as a specific place. At first, they are from a 1950s house – a lounge with looped film playing on the television watched by a mannequin with bulging eyes, a child’s bedroom, a study, a dining room with food on the table, a garden with the remnants of a picnic. One room has a masked figure, just as motionless as the mannequins, but I’m convinced it is a real person. All the time there is loud music (written by Damon Albarn), sometimes discordant, sometimes melancholy. The phrase Grand Guignol enters my mind, even though I’m not exactly sure what it means.

To be continued

Tags: it felt like a kiss, punchdrunk