(Michael Coveney’s article appeared in the Independent, 8/9.)
An account of the London plague is a strong choice of subject for a song cycle, and this Traverse production is already a festival highlight and a triumph for the singer Marc Almond, writer Mark Ravenhill, composer Conor Mitchell and director-designer Stewart Laing.Drawing on snippets of Samuel Pepys' diaries and Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, Ravenhill wrote 10 short passages about spring, a man in a wig, a private passion, grief and so on, culminating in: "I am as an Israelite when Ten Plagues infect the land I live…"