Phelim McDermott has created a richly theatrical meditation on his relationship with Philip Glass and the composer's music. The show begins with anecdotes about McDermott's attempts to create a production with Glass and Maurice Sendak based on the latter's In the Night Kitchen, before widening into reflections on the artistic and spiritual journey that followed. First published in 1970, In the Night Kitchen tells the story of Mickey, a young boy who tumbles into a surreal dream world. In retrospect, the tale can be seen as a metaphor for McDermott's own immersion in Glass's music, a journey he explores through the lens of Arnold Mindell's Processwork, or deep democracy. Mindell's model can be visualised as a cone comprising levels of experience, from Consensus Reality, our everyday consciousness, through Dreamland, the realm of feelings, symbols, and dreams, to the Essence Level, the deepest state of awareness, where distinctions dissolve into a primal sense of unity. Mindell describes this final stage as an experience of profound stillness and the source from which all experience emerges. In Tao of Glass, McDermott draws a parallel between Mindell's ideas and the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese philosophical text traditionally attributed to Laozi. Glass's music becomes the conduit through which these deeper states of consciousness are experienced rather than merely understood. Despite engaging with such abstract ideas, however, the production remains disarmingly human. McDermott fills it with warmth and humour through stories of his family, home life, and theatrical career, grounding the philosophical themes in everyday experience. The production is further enriched by ingenious puppetry in which sheets of printed musical notation are transformed into an ever changing cast of characters and visual metaphors. The puppeteers bring remarkable precision, wit, and expressive life to these simple materials, while the musicians perform Glass's hypnotic score with exceptional clarity and sensitivity, allowing its cumulative emotional power to unfold naturally. The musical sequences, which evoke the suspended consciousness of a coma, become the evening's emotional high point. As Glass's repetitive structures gather momentum, the audience is gently invited beyond Consensus Reality into a more contemplative state, where ordinary perceptions of time dissolve and the music evokes an almost dreamlike stillness. While Tao of Glass is ostensibly a meditation on the nature of consciousness and the creation of art, framed through the relationship between a theatre maker and a composer, it ultimately achieves something far more profound. Rather than simply inviting analysis, it encourages the audience to experience how theatre, music, and imagination can open a path to deeper ways of seeing and being. Long after the curtain falls, this production and Glass's music continue to resonate.
Rated: ★★★★★
Reviewed by J.C.
Photo by Johan Persson
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