Ted's Tough Task

THE failure of Towering Inferno's show Kaddish, which treated the subject of the Jewish Holocaust through the media of an eight piece band, and film footage spread over three screens, to please the punters, has been much talked about. Local arts journalist Mike Casey, feels the problem was really one of marketing:

"Although occupying a position of prominence as a theatre show in the programme, Kaddish had little in common with any notion of conventional theatre. With its hardcore industrial ambient soundscape and stream of consciousness visual projection, its closest antecedent would be the psychedelic happenings of Ken Kesey, The Grateful Dead and Timothy Leary in the US in the Sixties", he says. "For incoming Artistic Director, Ted Turton, who pointed to Kaddish as an example of the direction he wished the festival to take, the controversy surrounding the show begs the question: will he be able to impose his artistic vision without alienating a significant slice of a loyal festival audience, as well as potential sponsors?"