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Singing Bones Reviews

North Wall Arts Centre, 6 Oct 2009
By and large, and in the strictest sense, people don’t tell stories these days. They may write them, or act them out, or sing them, or preach them but stories are rarely just plain told. It’s almost unsettling then, at first, to have just one man stand on a stage and tell you a story. It’s not immediately the most engaging of storytelling methods, even with some brilliantly atmospheric backing music. However, if you can work through your natural discomfort for such things, you become drawn into a world where the characters and action become every bit as real as if they were all up on that stage with the teller of tales.
The Singing Bones, performed by the Devil’s Violin, is two things: a performance by a wonderful folk band and an involving story told to music. The music has shades of the Gallic, the Gaelic and even Scandinavian, all written by the band, with a fiddle, a cello and an accordion. The story is about, well, stories, and centres on one orphan who is told dark tales to teach him about death, secrets and love. Stories, though, need to be told, so when he refuses to pass them on, and instead just repeats them into a bag, the stories become rather angry.
What starts off slowly, like the Brothers Grimm meets the soundtrack to a Stella Artois advert, becomes far more involving. The music and the story itself become more intense, taking the audience through all the emotions. The story about love is particularly well told and the high point of The Singing Bones, where the words and the music compliment each other perfectly, so that you forget that the narrator is not, in fact, a married couple but one man, in a flowery shirt. The Devil’s Violin are touring with The Singing Bones for the rest of the year and it is highly recommended that you catch it while you can.
Rhys Griffiths, 07/10/09

Devil's Violin Reviews

“A scintillating combination of music, sound and story” The Times

"If you've ever been less than taken with storytelling, put the experience to one side and be prepared to be amazed, transported and moved by this masterful exemplar of the genre." Venue

"Here's one show that lives up to it's name." The Big Issue

"Fabulous blend of words and music, just wonderful!" Jude Merrill, Director of Travelling
Light Theatre

Full reviews:

'Daniel Morden's impelling, theatrical storytelling is by turns visceral, eerie and heart-wrenching,underpinned and heightened by virtuoso gypsy riffs which take the audience by the hand and lead them, sometimes jigging and sauntering, sometimes at a breakneck rush or a stealthy creep, through the dark, shape-shifting woods of Romany folk law. Using just his own 'bag 'o bones' and
his voice, which has a range of mood and tone as wide the instruments that accompany him, Morden
unearths and celebrates a rich oral tradition which has been buried for too long. If you've ever
been less than taken with storytelling, put the experience to one side and be prepared to be
amazed, transported and moved by this masterful exemplar of the genre.' VENUE (Bristol)

The Devil’s Violin – a review by Professor Mike Wilson, Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries,
University of Glamorgan

'The Devil’s Violin is a new touring show performed by Daniel Morden and a group of musicians consisting of Oliver Wilson-Dickson (violin), Eddy Jay (accordion) and Sarah Moody (cello). Having seen the show at Theatr Y Bont, Pontypridd on 27 September, it is my opinion that this show represents a significant step forward in the development of storytelling as a performance art.
Over the past ten years or so, storytelling has begun to develop its range both in terms of applied practice and performance forms. This has led to the emergence of an increasing number of shows, constructed around specific themes or collections of stories and that have been increasingly formal or theatrical in their approach and often involved a number of different storytellers. This has been a development from the model of the storytelling ‘concert’ that was prevalent in the eighties and early nineties where storytellers would generally work in an individual capacity from a flexible repertoire. Daniel Morden has been a key player in these developments of storytelling for adult audiences. It could, however, be argued that this highly performative (and, indeed, rehearsed) approach to storytelling runs counter to the more democratic (and, therefore, informal) nature of storytelling itself. My own view is that different occasions demand different kinds of storytelling and the highly performative approach has been a legitimate, and largely successful attempt to allow storytelling to reside in the more formal venues of theatres and arts centres. The danger is that in the formalisation of the storytelling experience, some storytellers will aspire to entering the ritualised and shamanistic realm of storytelling, adopting the role of ‘storyteller-aspriest’ and yet fall short of it. What makes The Devil’s Violin such an extraordinary piece of work is that it pulls back from such a position. As a piece of storytelling, this is probably the most formal, stylised and scripted work I have seen from Daniel Morden and that is, in part, out of necessity from working with a group of musicians. The concert format is abandoned in favour of a more coherent show which place the individual stories and items of music into a frame that holds everything together into a single experience and that is one element that makes this a significant development in storytelling. But it is Morden’s control over his performance and his playfulness with the form that is most impressive.
After the show a colleague remarked to me that it was very useful for students to see such an effective, yet simple performance. What she was referring to was the effectiveness of a performance that was uncluttered by set, props, costume, technology and, even, characterisation. It was simply a group of performers telling a story with words and music. Nevertheless, I would contend that that it is a simplicity that masks a much greater complexity and an effortlessness that conceals a sophisticated level of virtuosity and artistry amongst all the performers. Morden’s skill is that he formalises the performance right up to the point of entering the realm of ritual and the shamanistic. He takes us right up to the wire and then, with a light gesture or glance at the audience, he draws back from the edge, reminding us that we are simply watching a storyteller telling us a story. It shocks us out of our enchantment , rather than allowing us to wallow in it and, in so doing, forces us to take a fresh, critical look at the story. In Brechtian terms, this is a perfect piece of Verfremdung and it what makes watching The Devil’s Violin a truly epic experience.'