WINTER- THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SEASON OF THEM ALL.

Yesterday I saw the most beautiful yet haunting piece of perform art on this plant.

As part of the Stockton Riverside Festival, an annual event in my home town calendar I saw WINTER BY Metro Boulot Dodo. Winter is part of a project by Metro Boulot Dodo based around the four season ( Spring came 2 years ago not seen the other two)and it tells the story of a person called Polly, I say person because each season in a way is a different stage of her life spring was when she was a girl and winter when she is an old lady so I’m assuming summer is when she is a teenager /young woman and autumn a middle aged woman.
Anyway this piece is really, really, really sad and yet oh so beautiful at the same time.
You go around in small groups exploring 6 hexagonal rooms whilst listening to a soundtrack via headphones. The first room is a hosptial bed and in your headphones the tale begins.

1 It starts off with hospital sounds and a woman breathing and these two doctors a male Dr Edwards and female Dr Gibbs come in discussing a patient, we learn for them that she is in her late 70s early 80s she is suffering from hypothermia, she was found in the snow with nothing except a nightgown. You hear what the doctors have to say before it shifts POV to Polly ( who is the patient and the lead in this story though we don’t know it’s Polly from the other seasons until the end which kidda puts it out or sync with those that have not been seen, plus the woman at the entrance did point out who she was so we had the heads up ) you listen to what she has to say she doesn't know what is happening to her or where she she but she uses terms like you and I, we,gone,it's your fault. You also hear this radio broadcast about a missing pianist called Gwen Penn before it switches back to the Doctors POV and the hospital sounds before you are told to move on to the next room.




2 In the next room one half of the space is set out as a music room while the other is a table and two chairs giving the space the feeling of two rooms. It is here you find out that it is a love story between Polly and a pianist called Gwen Penn ( yes Gwen is a bloke) and it is set around Christmas. We learn through Polly that he had to make the decorations for the tree out of tin foil and she made the fairy to go on top cause they had little money but that didn’t matter, to her it was the happiest time of her life. We also learn that he is writing her a very special piece of music as a present but it’s not finished in time so he leaves her by the fire where they had been snuggling against the cold and watching the snow fall outside and shuts himself away in his music room so that he could have it is finished by the end of the day, however he doesn’t. You hear Polly’s thoughts and feelings about this she is sometimes sad, she is sometimes angry , she is sometimes happy not because she hasn’t got a present it’s because it takes him away from her, not in a bad way but in the love way.
This section end with Dr Edwards and Gibbs’ ( they chip in every so often) and at this point they are very optimistic about her recovery.




3 In this room a grand piano sit and it starts off with Polly hearing Gwen on the radio, she tells us about her shock yet happiness to hear her lover on the radio yet she is somewhat confused as to why. Then it switches over to TV news report about this pianist who just turned up out of the blue with a piano and stated playing in front of this music hall somewhere in London . He plays for free for five days without stopping which makes him famous and soon everybody wants him to play for them. Back at the hospital Dr Gibbs has become kind of a friend to the Old Polly ( though she is in a coma) because nobody else has come to visit her. There has been a slight change in her condition but it is still touch and go. It is here that we move on.






4 This room is the smallest of the 7 and contains four small domes( Polly calls them her snowglobes as she can't be with him on his tour) each one containing a different city ( London, Pairs, some where in Japan and I think one might have Germany so you have radio and TV reports in four different languages).
You hear Polly’s thoughts on his tour how she feels upset because she now has to share him with the world and he is playing songs that were sometimes only might for her. Yet she is happy for him because she had always told him to get out that and do something with your gift.
We switch back to the hospital and Dr Gibbs has brought in a radio hoping that this will help in Old Polly’s recovery, she asks Dr Edwards to tuning it in to a station that he thinks Old Polly will like ( being somewhat older than the herself ) and piano music fills the wards. We move on.




5 This room has sheet music all over the place and in the centre is a little model of a grand piano. Polly tells us that cracks have starting appearing she tells us how she fells helpless watching his world crumble. We hear news and radio reports of cancellations, half assed performs, rubbish reviews, demands for money back, not turning up, long disappearances etc. Polly tell’s how she can’t breathe without her wondering if he’s ok and how one day while he had been gone for such a long time she just stop worrying and life returns to normal. It is here we hear a radio broadcast about a missing pianist called Gwen Penn. At this point Polly has become the old woman who is laying in a coma suffering from Hypothermia in hospital, it is also here we find out why she was found with nothing except a night gown, it was because she thought saw Gwen stood outside after so long away she was running to meet him.
In the hospital we hear that old Polly’s condition has suddenly slipped from good to very bad.






6 The final room is the biggest of the lot, we are back in the hospital room only this time it has snow, icicles, Christmas trees and things in case in ice. Polly starts to speak and in almost the same as what she was saying in the beginning you know the terms and not knowing what’s happening only this time she adds what ever is happening to her she doesn’t want it to continue so she letting go and this is her goodbye mainly to Gwen( who she doesn’t know if he is alive or dead or what he looks like, you know all the little things )
Now this bit made me cry and I mean really cry, my mascara ran, my nose ran, I couldn’t breath, the works. Though for some reason I was the only of the group, which consisted of my best bud Jenny, a lad and a couple all of them must of had a heart of stone because it was really hard not to cry and the more you tell yourself you’re not going to the you do.
Ok brace yourselves because you will ( or not) cry so tissues at the stand by.

Just after Polly tells us she is letting go we know hear the Dr Gibbs come into the room and on the bedside table next to the radio are some flowers in a vase. She thinks they are from Dr Edwards who thinks they are from her but they aren’t and none of the other staff saw anyone bring them in. The only way to find out who brought them and if they could finally put a name to the patient is to open the card that came with the flowers, something Dr Gibbs is reluctant to do, so it falls to Dr Edwards.

This is the part………

He opens the card and it says

Polly
After 40 years I finally finished it
Love forever and always
G

With the card is a piece of sheet music.
And just as Polly finally gets the piece of music he started 40 years ago she dies.



But it was how it was done that’s the sad part.

You have headphones on and the piece he written for her start playing and in the background you hear the Dr Gibbs shouting at her, telling her to hold on and come back and then Dr Edwards barking medical terms then they fade out and all that left is the piano piece and the long beep of the machine.




And thus Conclude WINTER and I’m crying now just writing about it but they are a mixed bag of sad and happy tears.

When we came out the guy you had to give the headphones back to was like do you want a tissue and I was like yeah and begin a typical bloke asked why I was crying, so I told him and he was very understanding and said he would add me to the tally of criers ( I don’t know if he was joking, about the tally not the criers and two more tally‘s Jenny‘s mum and little sister cause they cried when the saw it to).
And now I’m going to have to wash my face cause I’ve made my mascara run again.
I’ve just had a thought, I wonder what it was like at 9.45 at night ( because that’s what time last performance was) I shudder to think especially the last room.

If you would like to know more about WINTER and the four season’s project, there’s not a lot on WINTER but there is a lot including audio on SPRING and some news and pics of AUTUMN visit Metro Boulot Dodo’s webpage.
http://www.metro-boulot-dodo.com/










On a story front I’ve so many ideas I don’t know where to begin. I’ll tell you where I’ll start by getting someone to give me a good kicking up the bum and finish this one.