Beats

This review is from 'Beats's run at the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe

You’ll feel like you’ve spent the night (well, an hour and a bit) gurning away in a boggy field after watching this simultaneously euphoric and melancholy tribute to the declining days of rave culture from performer Kieran Hurley.

The concept is deceptively simple: Hurley – fresh of face faced and clearly not a veteran of second summer of love – tells two interlocking stories about a young lad and a middle-aged policeman’s journey to the same illegal gathering in the Scottish countryside, the former to have the first big night of his young life, the second to shut it down.

There is the danger the whole thing might seem like a naive obituary for a scene its creator never experienced first-hand. But Hurley delivers the performance with an eye-popping intensity that burns away such concerns and completely belies the fact he sits at his desk for the entirety.

And there is thrilling audio visual accompaniment, a yearning soundtrack with visuals that makes judicious and constant use of the more beautiful and melodic music to emerge from the early ‘90s scene. The effect is utterly transportive – this is definitely as much for the dance music fans as the theatre ones.

By Andrzej Lukowski