Anyone who has ever visited Barcelona and gazed upon the marvel and madness of the Sagrada Familia can testify that Antoni Gaudi’s epic reinterpretation of a Gothic cathedral is not only a wonder of architectural design, but a vivid act of religious piety and devotion.
AGAP Theatre, a faith-based Glasgow group specialising in religious-themed productions, has brought the story of Gaudi’s life and his work to the Festival stage in this broadly educational piece.
Opening with his tragic death, the story then follows him from his sickly infancy through his education and onto his latter-day success. It’s an interesting tale, precisely because Gaudi himself was a strange and at times enigmatic yet charismatic figure. He’s played by writer-director Stephen Callaghan, who makes a decent fist of a Catalan accent while enacting the broad strokes of the man’s life.
The rest of the roles are carried by Jacqueline Glencourse and Russell Wheeler, who deliver much of their dialogue and narration almost more in the form of a flat lecture, reciting rather than acting their parts. That said, while AGAP try their best to fill out his story with flavour, there’s a thinness to the play and a superficiality despite the depth of information being carried through.
It’s almost as if it's not entirely clear whether the show wants to be about the man himself, his relationship with faith, loss and death or with his work. Instead, it hits a scattershot of various aspects and in doing so tells a winding story through his life that feels like it's meandering without purpose for much of the performance.
By the end, you’ll feel informed, and mildly entertained but little more enlightened about the man himself and the mysteries behind him and his mind than if you’d skimmed over his Wikipedia page.