Robert Lepage, the Quebecois director, writer, actor and filmmaker, who combines physical and visual elements with text and performance, returned to London in an impressionistic work, which he first created in 1991, following a painful break-up. It was seen at the National Theatre in 1992.
The touring production, taking its cue from M C Escher, has been rewritten and reworked. On the Barbican stage there is a huge tilting cube. It has three walls and three open sides. It rotates all the time. Walls become floors and floors become ceilings. The actors become acrobats.
Lepage explores solitude, drug addiction, disorientation and the creative drive through the stories of three men unhappily in love. In 1949 Jean Cocteau, poet, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and opium addict, visited New York and Miles Davis, trumpet player and heroin addict, had an affair with French singer Juliette Greco in Paris. 40 years later Lepage (played with humour by Marc Labrèche) stays in the same hotel room where they stayed and where previously Jean-Paul Sartre had written his books.
Lepage believes Needles and Opium has grown and deepened significantly. Miles Davis, who was formerly but a mere shadow, now appears on stage played by Wellesley Robertson III. Technically, the production is amazing. But, as always with Lepage the visuals upstage the words; and this has ever been so and even when he is staging Shakespeare. The revolving cube is the star turn.