In a festival already over-populated by men and microphones, Simon McBurney has produced something of a game-changer. He hasn't taken up stand-up, though he begins his new solo show with some knockabout chat. After that, he transforms a chilly Edinburgh conference centre into the humid depths of the Amazon jungle, using only his voice and a couple of mics.
Complicite's new show, which will transfer to London's Barbican in February 2016, is a hi-tech trip. The audience wear headphones that are of such quality that when McBurney speaks into the left ear of a mannequin on stage, you can practically feel his breath on your ear; and when he buzzes a mosquito sound around the right ear, you all but bat it away. This is binaural technology - sounds recorded and transmitted separately into each ear - and McBurney uses his new toy to bring his story thrillingly alive.
That story, based on Petru Popescu's new book, Amazon Beaming, traces the journey of the National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre into the Brazilian Amazon in 1969. He was there to shoot the Mayoruna tribe, but when he found them and began to follow them, he failed to mark his tracks back to his plane. Lost in the rainforest, he was forced to live among the tribe, though they shared no language.
It is an incredible story, beautifully written. The tribal leader has warts on his legs “like barnacles” and wears a “diadem of white egret feathers”. There are red-cheeked men and dancing boys, and rituals with hallucinogenic toads. It is, primarily, a cracking yarn but it sucks in bigger ideas at every narrative twist. Is it possible to communicate without words? What good are possessions? Could modern man to remove himself from time? What will become of these tribes if the oilmen win?
Two hours without an interval is too long, but this is masterful storytelling from a man and a company who are incapable of remaining within known theatrical boundaries. A must-see - or perhaps I should say, a must-hear.
The Independent