We Will Hear The Angels

Summerhall‘s Dissection Room is empty save for a violin, a cello, guitars, music stands, and a screen onto which a sweeping cityscape by night is projected. Someone walks across the space. Then someone else. The performers pick up momentum. Then they are carrying sometimes small things, sometimes pieces of furniture (Emily James). They criss-cross the stage, rearrange the furniture, rearrange themselves. They busy themselves at the desks, an interesting percussion in the small household chores. Then they start to speak, telling personal stories of love, longing and ultimately loss, punctuated by a haunting vocal refrain about loneliness (actor and Musical Director Daniel Padden).

It’s hard to know what to make of the first half of We Will Hear The Angels. There’s something plaintive in watching these disparate, desperate people go about their lives in parallel, in not so splendid isolation. Are there angels in the silence? The quiet reflection occasionally verges on the turgid. But then Greg Sinclair pops up with a jaunty swagger and a perky version of Orange Juice’s Rip It Up and the show comes alive. Mia Scott sings a wispy, yearning version of Patsy Cline’s Why Can’t He Be You. And Apphia Campbell serves up a majestic rendition of Etta James’ I Would Rather Go Blind. Then the four musicians play a Bach interlude.