Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Across a Love Locked Bridge
Paul Sellar
Genre: Biography, Poetry-Based Theatre, Solo Performance
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The poetry of Paul Sellar is delivered by the man himself in an effortless admission of how life has treated him from being 9 in a holiday in Ireland to being a man waiting his partner coming out of an AA meeting. It is delivered on a simple stage and deals with hugely complex matters in a delivery of words that capture your attention because of a simple and highly deft delivery.
Review
Delivered in four sections this is a biographical show of poetry which delights with the mellifluous drip of imagery, narrative and rhythm drip into our lugs (Scots word for ears) as we are lugged round a life well lived and to places new. Starting with The Shape of Beginnings, where he is 9 years old, we have a nice Celtic myth to start us off before we are treated to more dramatic monologues which is theatrical but not dramatic. Sellar stands and allows the words to speak for himself, without over emphasising or forcing the imagery anywhere other than between us to be sensed and enjoyed.
From the first section, which is more free flowing and free verse, we have the fantastic image of someone still falling as part two, The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak, tends to the more structured, more filled with more recognisable rhyme and rhythm. Now 17 and flourishing at school, Sellar has Rousseau, Marx and Engels in his sights, as well as his own development into the man he wishes to be. I particularly liked the poem Petersfield which began to show the ripening man with the poetry mirroring that newly found adulthood and responsibility emerging – structure and form felt like comfortable knowledge being absorbed.
By the third section we are now delving into a mature young man in his mid-30s who, is part of a relationship with someone who has an affinity with handbags. Now Camden features and London looms large like the landscape in which greater events are to follow. It feels really nicely poised.
The final section brings us closer to now with the end of the relationship around the “geographical” of an AA partner looking to avoid confronting responsibility. It is a mature voice with less of the innocence of youth but also of a man who can see the foibles and opportunities balanced in the heartbeat of standing on a bridge where love is celebrated with locks, missing keys like a relationship losing its purpose. By now, we have the overview of this journey. We have heard the words reflect how the human has become that bit more than they could have hoped but embraced too the pain of change that is both inevitable and dreadful.
Sellar is a seductive storyteller, allowing the words to tell the tale whilst he is standing to one side of his microphone stand. It is soulful and gorgeous without having to work so hard that you begin to doubt your own faculties. Sellar takes you by the lug and treats you to the source of his pain. There is nothing more than a spotlight, a creative and the opening music from Bowie. In essence all changes as the teller stays the same.
