Michael Tanner

Road to nowhere | 12 April 2008

<strong>Lost Highway</strong><br /> <em>Young Vic</em> <strong>Aci, Galathea e Polifemo</strong><br /> <em>Middle Temple</em>

issue 12 April 2008

Lost Highway
Young Vic

Aci, Galathea e Polifemo
Middle Temple

Olga Neuwirth’s Lost Highway, which was first performed in October 2003 in Graz, gets its first UK outing at the Young Vic in a production by ENO. It is impossible to imagine it being better done, and the roar of applause which greeted it at the end of its unbroken 90 minutes was, I hope, mainly evoked by the perfection of the execution. So many things could have gone wrong, and none of them did. The set consists of a black strip reaching from one side of the auditorium to the other, wide enough to cope with a car, as it does; and above it a large Plexiglass cube, containing a spiral staircase which is lowered for the characters to descend to the lost highway, or raised so other characters can intrude.

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