Neuwirth's Lost Highway: watch videos and read reviews
(April 2008)
Olga Neuwirth's Lost Highway provided English National Opera and the Young Vic Theatre with a ground-breaking evening of music theatre to launch their new collaboration. The work is Neuwirth's adaptation of the cult movie by David Lynch and Barry Gifford, amplifying the claustrophobic and disturbing imagery of the original.
Watch an Interview Video of Neuwirth talking about the work and a Rehearsal Video giving a flavour of the remarkable staging. These films are excerpted from a documentary about the production screened by Sky Arts, appearing on boosey.com by kind permission.
"Lost Highway is based on the 1997 David Lynch film and endeavours to recreate the surreal, lurid, raunchy world of that psychological thriller. Fusing video, dialogue and music, both live (a 27-piece ensemble ably conducted by Baldur Brönnimann) and pre-recorded electronics, Neuwirth captures the menace lurking round every corner.
"The plot, weaving reality and fantasy, sometimes confuses the characters as much as the audience. The condition they are suffering from is described by Lynch as a “psychogenic fugue”: a state so traumatic that they assume another identity to escape.
"Diane Paulus’s production, designed by Riccardo Hernandez, locates the action either on a highway running right across the stage or in a glass-fronted apartment, its floors linked by a spiral staircase. Complementing this is the nightmarish video work of Philip Bussmann, its shapes and characters constantly morphing, projected on four screens above the audience seated in the round."
Evening Standard
"An extraordinary theatrical reworking."
The Independent
"About as close as you can get to making a real live film on stage."
The Times
> Further information on Work: Lost Highway
Photo: Sarah Lee
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