Nick Jaina's show The Hole in the Coffin is a sincere piece about a lonely drifter and the power of music.
Jaina/the narrator returns to New Orleans for the funeral of a musician who has killed himself. He stumbles into some family drama, which may or may not include the murder of said musician. The songs which punctuate the story are relevant to the piece. It's atmospheric and ends with a spooky segment in which the narrator has agreed to enter a coffin and impersonate a corpse. He's not even quite sure how it happened or why he did it. But, for the memory of his favourite musician, he'd do anything. The Hole in the Coffin isn't thrilling but it is solid and it does make sense.
Gérald Kurdian, is a French performer and he arrived with a bumbling, jokey persona. I couldn't tell if it was a put on, especially during his botched encore. His show, entitled 1999, is "a meditation/extraction of the TV series Space 1999" according to the performance notes, but this wasn't discussed during the piece. While Kurdian was funny and had some really great ideas, his show was not cohesive and was bound only by a loose narrative about a sci-fi musical he planned. I did very much enjoy his slideshows and his hand-held camera work, which simulated some of the shots which would happen, he told us, if he was to produce this musical
A problem I had with the evening, was that the music itself was not that great. The packaging of these songs into storytelling or performance pieces seemed a little bit cynical, perhaps a way to participate in the arts circuit rather than trying to make it in the tough world of music. Neither of these performances hung together as strongly as they could have and the audience was appreciative but fairly lukewarm. Both had promise but one lacked spark and the other lacked intensity.