Stuart Bowden: Wilting in Reverse

★★★
theatre review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
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Published 20 Aug 2015
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Stuart Bowden – rest his whimsical soul – is dead. Before his tragic passing, however, the singing storyteller wrote a script to be performed posthumously: one that details the circumstances of his death and, in its own way, keeps him alive. Tonight, Bowden’s being played by an actor (played, but of course, by the real Stuart Bowden). It’s amazing, almost like he’s really with us…

Bowden’s "script" also focuses on a performance, this one on a distant planet that’s not quite as viable for life as initially thought (oops). Up there, Bowden would use the theatre to revive a long-lost love affair night after night, never letting it reach its ending.

Wilting in Reverse is a cutesy meditation on theatre’s unspoken repetition, the way the same show plays out over and over, and actors get stuck in cycles. It’s full of meta gags—village halls called ‘This Moment’ and scripted improvisations that collapse—the main one being that Wilting in Reverse is absolutely, unrepeatably live, because it enlists us as performers. Audience members swap in and out of parts, even getting the chance to play Bowden himself, and sing along to his looped Casio keyboard mini-tunes.

Bowden’s shows always handle grief delicately, such is his knack for sliding silliness into sweetness or poignancy. However, this time it’s all a bit thrown-together and both story and telling sometimes hides behind its surrealism, so that anything goes. He’s been better than this: both tighter and more profound.