AbacusWhen Los Angeles-based director Lars Jan unmasked the public intellectual Paul Abacus as a fictional creation, were any of us surprised (the name is a bit on the nose)? This project lit up the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 where Jan staged street events that saw the figure surrounded by performer-paparazzi and dancing camera operators, and even holding a press conference. Its run at the Fringe suggests that the idea has overstayed its welcome.

Invented to ask existential questions in today’s screen-culture, this performance makes a grab for autonomy, giving the creation life of its own. The character’s presence is mediated by cameras, thus he’s ushered onstage via a monochromatic live-feed.

Paul Abacus is actually played by a likeable Sonny Valicenti, wearing strips of tape under his eyes like warrior paint. He begins with an anecdote of a child asking their mother about a rainbow: “Are there more colours?”. We’re requested to park both our disbeliefs and limited senses at the door. The former will prove problematic.

Even if we are to share Abacus’s distrust of the idea of a ‘nation’ and the arbitrary walls it creates, and buy into his perceived connection between property-sales on the moon to spikes in U.S. house prices and Second Life activity, this presentation spirals out of control. The audience is taxed by theories that don’t really become transformative over the 50 minutes. It goes to show that a theatricalised-lecture really needs to descend from conceptual heights and build something powerful from the information introduced (an excellent example being Niamh Shaw’s TO SPACE, also at Summerhall).

The action tries to sustain itself with Pablo N. Molins’s flashy visuals, manipulated live by John Luna and Annie Saunders’s balletic camerawork. These feel overly-demonstrative and reinforce spectacle rather than interrogate it, which presumably was Jan’s intention in the first place.

History might prove us fools for not listening to him but you don’t need help to do the numbers on this terribly self-fascinated work.

 

Abacus runs at Summerhall (Main Hall) until 30 Aug. For more information and tickets, see the Fringe website.