Standby for Tape Back-Up

The Stage / Natasha Tripney


If ever a show required revisiting and rewatching, it’s Ross Sutherland’s exploration of synchronicity and iteration. Scratched at last year’s Forest Fringe and returning for a full run at Summerhall, the show sees Sutherland entering a kind of conversation with an old VHS cassette given to him by his late grandfather which contains fragments of old TV shows, snatches of the Fresh Prince and the Crystal Maze, the ghosts of Ghostbusters. He plays these clips over and over until it appears as if they’re shaping his words, guiding him. Patterns surface and submerge like the shadow of a shark as Sutherland discusses life, death, loss and depression.

Over the past year the piece grown in intensity and there’s a real sense of possession to the process, as Sutherland, black-suited, stands in front of a TV monitor, speaking in sync with the images which play out on the white wall behind him. His performance is fevered in places, consuming, compelling. Hypnotic as the whole thing is the space at the Demonstration Room at Summerhall, with its high ceiling, sometimes disrupts the sense of communion rather than enhances it, but it’s such a rich, stimulating piece that in the end it transcends this.