WITH THE PEOPLE FROM THE BRIDGE

Most striking, though, is how densely layered the whole thing is. Voices drift in from the distant past and the literal beyond, crackling out of a TV set or issuing from a cassette-player. The piece reads like a cross-section of a microcosm, with the prose inserts making you aware not only of the shadowy underworld of the performance space but also of the world outside it – trains pass by overhead, audience members get up and leave, even a few of the performers creep out through back-exits – and of the world outside the text itself, i.e. that of you, the reader. In this way, Lyacos allows you to peek through the gaps; you don’t see all the way down, but you do get an idea of just how far down it goes.