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. There are four huge screens on which moving images, sometimes the same, sometimes not, are displayed throughout.

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