The Rain Emperor

02 March, 2009
by: SUSIE

Drawn away from bright lights and Shoreditch streets, we walk a tree-lined path, lit with projected musical scores, and proceed towards the entrance. The venue is Village Underground, a warehouse with a Victorian past with bricked, vaulted arches and a vast atrium, where shadows claim damp corners. My hand is stained bruise-black and I feel like Persephone after she has tasted the food in Hades: no turning back now. Known reality is suspended as a scrap of black organza is pushed into my palm with the whispered insistence that I must remember to hand it to the widow.

Ushered to our seats of cloth-covered hay bails bound with string, we are inducted into this netherworld by a conductor whose eyes glimmer with lunacy. At his command, we transform into a screeching vocal orchestra and so the music begins.

A wild-haired harpy lurks in her watery depths. She helps us across the stepping stones but does not want to let us out of her grasp: "I've been waiting so long for you, why are you leaving me?"

A man parades, ready in his anorak, his umbrella blown inside out. He longs for a storm that continually eludes him. "Shh!" he commands us, listening for signs of rain. But, "Nothing!".

As pools of light appear and fade around the space, the crowd follows and convenes in anticipation of each act. The late works of The Rain Emperor (the remarkable Robert Jacob) are performed in turn by a statuesque saxophonist with fishnet tights and ornate wig; a puppet-like pianist in top hat and tails; a classical guitarist with leaves made of musical scores nestling in his black curly hair; and the renowned Elysian Quartet, the women with black lipstick, hair in doll-like disarray, backed by a projection of cascading autumn leaves.

The Rain Emperor
www.therainemperor.com

The "pitter-patter" pulse of raindrops drives the rhythmic telling of Johann Proux, a gothic tale of a French doctor. The flickering half made-up face of Scottee, projects onto a high brick wall behind, while the gruesome murder of a prostitute on Parisian streets is played out – he, lean and be-suited; she, salacious in slick, shiny raincoat.

A sudden bright light blinds us; from the corner of my eye there is an ominous winching action and the squeal of rope and pulley. The beacon fades, vision is restored and an ethereal girl with pink ballet shoes is suspended high up on one wall. Music accompanies her slow, deliberate descent. Occasionally she pauses to draw from her nest of hair, paper aeroplanes – folded musical scores – which she sends gliding into the audience.

A girl in white robe performs an engaging dance, recklessly close to her audience. A vast projection of her whirling is repeated six-or-more-fold around the warehouse walls, 10-metres high. Her upward gaze into an ultraviolet camera is beamed onto a curtain of translucent black – the blank-eyed glare is childlike, ghostlike, a haunting from this building's past.

A final circle of light falls down upon us, followed by a shower of gold glitter. The parading man, apparently content with the storm that has blown up and died down around him, bids us farewell.

Away from the Village Underground and onto the London Underground, I reach into my pocket and pull out the scrap of black fabric. It seems I failed to uphold my side of the bargain. But perhaps the freaks will return to town one day. I certainly hope so.

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Click here to read an interview about Judy Jacob and The Rain Emperor.