Brighton Spiegeltent: Bosco, 27 May 2023
The dulcet tones of Charles Quarterman, evocative of a Wes Anderson film narrator with its West coast accent and particularities of pronunciation, produce something of a spoken word fever dream. Reaching from his tall stack of hardback books, within each sits a story or poem from Quarterman’s own catalogue, he conjures images and ideas mixing the familiar with side-turns of logic and sense. Words are ornate swords and sewing boxes to him, to cut with finesse and seamlessly affix previously unconnected concepts – reality as much a conjuring as his beautifully extended metaphors and similes.
Part wordsmith, part humorist, part philosopher, Quarterman sets a comfortably askew tone from the outset as he presents in his curious costume of cowboy boots and bucket hat combo, the room filling with a heady incense burning in a corner. He’s both unassuming and attention-drawing. It’s a good setting for his words, somewhat straddling an other worldly plane as his mental gaze falls to bees, hitchhiking, family mealtimes, and “poetic atrocities”. It’s an alien’s perspective on Americana, constructed from the ground up with the sureness that everything included is there because it has been chosen and fastidiously examined. This is particularly explored in Quarterman’s wild tangents of metaphors, verbal studies in their own right evoking sculptures of new perspectives piled upon new perspectives. In places it can make you quite lightheaded.
Fundamentally there’s a richness that is utterly unique. These stories and poems are moments presented to do with what you wish. Quarterman rings a cowbell tied to a stick to indicate when applause might be appropriate, but the feeling is it’s definitely up to the audience. He offers to either reimburse us for the 6 minutes he has left of his promised hour or to have an earlier poem repeated – we can leave with the coin at the earlier time, and there is no judgment in this offer. Some take him up on it. Others respectfully place their coins on the stack of books left on the stage once Quarterman has exited. It’s a beautiful exercise in autonomy. A quiet closer to this magical hour of alien agency.
Brighton Fringe: An Evening With Charles Quarterman For One Hour
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