Una Santa Oscura at the Project

Una Santa Oscura is a piece of music theatre currently showing in the Project Arts Centre, performed by violinist Ioana Petcu-Cola, and inspired by the music and life of the 12th Century abbess, composer and mystic Hildegard of Bingen. See here for a sample of Hildegard’s music.

Essentially this is a theatrical art installation. It’s 48 minutes of a woman going through domestic rituals, acting part visually but for the most through skilled violin playing; aided by various images and colours that are flashed onto her apartment wall and a dominant white noise that directs the action.

The musical score combines the electronic background noise with a 21st Century take on Hildgard’s music that chops and changes to suit the play’s narrative.

If art installation is your bag then this is for you but the play fell short a lot for me. Firstly, the white noise is seriously painful. It is supposed to reflect the sounds of the convent life with dripping water etc but it’s too dominant and grating for it to be a complement to the action; it’s the dominant force and is not pleasant. The first block of noise in particular is so torturous that for the 5-ten minutes or so when the play opens you can’t focus on anything until it goes away, I can feel the pain even thinking about it.

As regards the music, combining Medieval church music with late 20thC dissonance to me doesn’t work. You can mix modern tonality with music of the baroque or classical periods because their forms are basic and structured and are complimented by a remix. But Hildegard’s modal form is already something unusual and refeshing to the tonal ear, adding dissonance is just overkill, and that’s before you get to the grating twist of the electronics. Or it could be just that I was expecting to hear some of Hildegard’s relaxing original scores, and that it wasn’t.

On the plus side, the play is clever in how it expresses Hildgard’s life and the moments of pure Medival music are beautiful, and Ioana’s visual acting is quite expressive. Go see this play if the pretensions and science of art are more important to you than its aesthetics, but in eithercase prepare yourself for the painful background noise.

Una Santa Oscura runs from 4 - 6 March, upstairs in the Projects Art Centre, tickets €15.