Landscape II - Melanie Wilson, Brighton Dome.

This review was first published on The Public Reviews.

Writer, performer & director: Melanie Wilson

‘We are all solitary I think. But we shout over the top and drown it out.’. Explains Vivian, the central character in Landscape II; a nomadic photographer, who has moved back in to the family cottage, in a remote and picturesque position on the Devon coast.
The reasons for her lone retreat emerge slowly throughout the performance, through memories and revelations, much like a viewfinder coming in to focus.

It’s true, there is certainly no shouting in Melanie Wilson’s finely crafted show. All of her pictures, whether sonic or visual are created in fine delicate strokes. Her voice is a whisper, her descriptions elliptic. If this story were a painting it would be watercolour, like a Dürer, all muted detail and appropriately pastoral. Critics often complain that watercolour lacks the passion and potential for depth that oil brings. It would be unfair to tar Landscape II with the same brush, but you could say that her tools did appear to restrict the variety of tone.

Wilson delivers the entire piece into a microphone, which allows her a greater amount of detail in her delivery, picking up her every breath and whisper. Yet what she gains in subtlety she loses in range. Wilson moves between the character and stories of Vivian and her great grandmother Bea who is writing diary entries in 1899. The two stories blend together, no doubt intentionally, but it was sometimes difficult to differentiate between the two and at points the delivery of the piece erred towards the monotonous.

However, in the finale, Wilson’s skills as a sound designer and her ability to weave sound and image, come to the fore, as the tragedy that befalls Vivian’s friend Mina in the Middle East begins to emerge and collide with the end of her great grandmothers tale. Whilst the piece overall was gentle in nature, audiences are perhaps more accustomed to work that shouts out loud, perhaps we are due a slower pace to remind us how solitary we may have forgotten we are.