Review: THE LOST HOURS, VAULT Festival

On a morning in late January in 1989, Salvador Dalí was dying at the age of 84 after changing the art world forever. The sharp decline of his health and a few suicide attempts quietly led to heart failure while he was listening to his favourite piece of music. What happened in the mind of the great Surrealist while he was drawing his last breaths? Canadian theatre company 8Rojo have the answer.

Having gathered a number of accolades around the world after its debut of in 2016, The Lost Hours has come to VAULT Festival for a personal Daliesque appointment with death. The piece is an all-enveloping, heart-racing, claustrophobic, feverish masterpiece.

The show, however, is probably not the best choice for those prone to a nervous disposition: created for an audience of one at a time, the complete lack of control, disorientating and confined surroundings, and movement-lead images of fiercely defined anguish built by the company are gloriously overwhelming. Memories of the painter's early days with his estranged sister grow to become live paintings where physical theatre marries symbolism and the inevitability of our demise.

Everything is heightened by darkness while the performers engage in a subconscious dance where life and death coexist in symbiotic nature and the participant is wheeled around bound by the frailness of a fading Dalí. The result is spectacular. The combination of sound and flameless tea lights propel the subject to a world that's suspended between the realms of Waterloo and the artist's psyche, relegated to a container on an unassuming alley.

The themes painted by the artist during his time come to life in this exceptional, one-of-a-kind piece of theatre. The intimacy and proximity to the action are essential to its outcome, and personal interaction is ultimately limited to the patron's yielding of their mobility and willingness to be immersed in the experience fully. In approximately 15 minutes, 8Rojo grant their public a bona fide out-of-body experience. The Lost Hours is truly extraordinary.

The Lost Hours runs at VAULT Festival until 9 February.

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