31 January 2005 | Zander-Nyrond

A memory from thirty years ago...

...but this excellent film has been with me ever since. It's based on R D Laing's book of psychological puzzles of the same name, and Laing himself appears in a non-speaking role, watching in an empty theatre as a company of actors set up and rehearse a show consisting of dramatisations of the puzzles, while exploring a number of them offstage as well.



The cast also included, I remember, John Moreno, Paola Dionisotti and Sharon Duce, and all the actors played off each other brilliantly. From the first shots of the company arriving in a bus to the sound of Pink Floyd (the last two tracks from "Dark Side of the Moon," and every time I hear the first one I find myself reciting the Knot that one of the actors reads over the instrumental) to the grand finale with its solitary spectator, the film compels attention. I recorded the soundtrack on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder (a tape now long lost) and listened to it again and again long after the film had vanished into the mists of television ephemera. I suppose it's too much to hope that a copy survives anywhere on video, let alone that a DVD would ever be released of something so offbeat and, let's face it, old...