Museum Hours

Where indeed is Pierre? Furthermore, who is Pierre? And who is looking for him? And why? In the fabulous production at The Vaults of Strindberg's A Dream Play, the question is posed in ludic and ever more exaggerated manner by an ostensibly French woman situated in what might be a kitchen set for a rudimentary breakfast or what we might take to be a rather down at heel bistro. Either way she is accompanied and indeed prompted by increasingly urgent cello refrains. Her desperation is palpable. The precise focus for her question much less so. The play won't yield easy answers, as Strindberg himself said of it: "The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, dissolve and merge. But one consciousness rules them all: the dreamer's; for him there are no secrets, no inconsistencies, no scruples and no laws. He does not judge or acquit, he merely relates; and because a dream is usually painful rather than pleasant, a tone of melancholy and compassion fo

'The South' is a 1983 film by Victor Erice - the director of the spellbinding Spirit of the Beehive. Both films deal with aspects of Spanish history and in particular the consequences of the civil war. El Sur is set in the very north of Spain in a deliberately damp and cold landscape, the family around whom the story is spun living in a house on the edge of town joined to the rest of the area by a long, straight road which is referred to as the border. The father used to live in the South, in Sevilla, but left for reasons that are shown to be both personal and political. The effect of the fracture in the family, in politics, and in the his way of life is reflected in the way that characters are frequently lit half in the light and half in shadow. The expertise with which this contrasted light and shadow is used throughout the film is little short of astonishing. This contrast can be seen as reflecting both the sun and light of Andalucia and the dreary winter in Galicia