Easdale Island Community Hall
Michael Marra & Liz Lochhead: In Flagrant Delicht

Michael Marra & Liz Lochhead: In Flagrant Delicht

Date of Event: Wed 09 Jun 2004
Event Type: Theatre
Time: 7.30pm
Ticket Pricing: £ (accompanied under 12s free )
 
From an article first published in Easdale People magazine, Issue No 20, Autumn 2004.

I don't know any satisfactory explanation for the causes of laughter. I do however know that it is one of the most satisfactory and life enhancing experiences. The evening we spent with Liz Lochhead and Michael Marra gave us full rein to express it. We were helped to relax into it by the atmosphere created in the hall. The cafe style arrangement of the tables and chairs suggested an intimacy that prepared us for the intimacy of the performance. Liz and Michael, from their fist offering, were sharing not only their skills as performers but the experience of their own lives.

We were given moving glimpses of life in Dundee and Glasgow, with Michael singing and playing on the keyboard and Liz offering either her poems or brilliant impressions of Glasgow women she had encountered. I say moving but these were also hilariously funny and perhaps this is one of the secrets of laughter, that at its best it has a hidden undercurrent of despair. There was an almost tangible sympathy between these two artistes creating a flawless performance whether they were performing individually or jointly. Michael sang his own songs, which are now available as a CD, and Liz's poems ranged from the funny to one about a lake which held us rapt with its beauty.

For me a particular sense of significance about this night was to be a member of an audience which was treated as adult by the performers playing to it. There was no sense at any time of being talked down to, as there so often is, particularly by performers wanting to make you laugh who go for the lowest common denominator. Not so with Liz and Michael. Their standards were high and you had to be up there with them. Their own concession to pure sentimentality came at the very end when, after rapturous applause, they returned to do an encore in which they abandoned their own material and sang and played that marvellous song "Two Sleepy People" - 'with nothing to say, but too much in love to break away'. It was a perfect way to end a splendid evening.

Kay Carmichael
 
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