The Spanish master, Francisco Goya, declared in his Los Caprichos etching series, “the sleep of reason brings forth monsters”. In the hands of an accomplished artist, such sleep awakens poetic genius. Graham Weir, celebrated as artistic high priest of a capella group Not the Midnight Mass, has returned to his original and riveting one-man musical drama, Letters from Patient Essop.
Essop visits Larvington Manor, an asylum, where 15 years before, stricken by the misery and corruption of the world, he had sequestered himself. Using projections of discarded photographs Weir found in junk shops, narrated extracts from Essop’s letters to his physician and powerful songs that lyrically express his inner turmoil, Essop charts the trajectory of his recovery, producing a richly textured collage of existential angst.
While teetering over the abyss with Essop on a tightrope of stretched nerves, we catch relief in the black comedy of Essop’s fellow inpatients, played convincingly by Sven Goldin and Simon Ratcliffe, who double as the musicians.
It is not simply that Weir’s voice is well trained, but he is naturally blessed with a pleasing timbre, as revealed by the recording, played during the production of Weir singing soprano at the tender age of ten.
Letters is a timely reminder that the expression of pain can be beautiful, and attending art of this calibre is the essential physician of the soul.
