‘A deeply moving and personal exploration of the searing complexities of life, parenting and being parented,” promised the publicity for Philip Glass’s latest work to reach Europe. Infinity has a libretto by the photographer and film-maker Arturo Béjar, who, with Nikki Appino, also co-directs this strangely insubstantial show, which features the singer and actor Tara Hugo, a regular Glass collaborator.
Hugo delivers a series of reminiscences in an affectionate, sometimes slightly ironic tone that’s not unlike some of David Sedaris’s tales. Whether these tangled stories of families and the changing relationships between their generations are real or imagined is never made obvious. Neither is it clear whether the grainy home movies of family parties and holidays that are screened behind the performance “go” with the anecdotes – perhaps depicting the parents and children mentioned in the narration – or whether they just provide some visual element in what otherwise seems a rather long and uneventful 55-minute recitation.
The music, played by a tactfully amplified ensemble of piano (Stephen Higgins), harp (Lavinia Meijer) and string trio (members of the United Strings of Europe), is very much a subsidiary element in all this. It provides a gentle, rippling backdrop to Hugo’s spoken word in the repeated motifs and lapping arpeggios of Glass’s best vamp-till-ready mode, while the songs dotted through the narration flit between chant and fully fledged phrases. But the score never really takes charge; like the flickering images on screen, it’s always part of the background.
The tone of the piece is bittersweet, and while for some it might evoke feelings of warmth and cosiness, reinforcing their belief in the complex strengths of family life, for others it might well seem indulgent and downright sentimental.
