"The main goal is to end life with a certain amount of precision ... and the least amount of mess," notes Laurie Anderson midway through Dirtday! She's referring to the US healthcare system, it's a line – a clean, surgical insertion of the blade – that could equally apply to her own approach tonight. The work's title feels somewhat misleading: though it is dominated by monologues in which Anderson roots around in the soil of religion, politics and the human condition, she rarely gets her hands truly dirty. Instead, she is the grande dame par excellence, dispensing observations, wry bons mots, anecdotes and the occasional piece of wisdom ("The purpose of death is the release of love") from the stage.
Her measured tone rarely alters even as her material morphs from sardonic to solemn to silly and back again. Genteel laughter ripples across the auditorium when Anderson cracks wise about Darwin and the Catholic Church; when she interrupts her own music to show a home video of her late dog Lolabelle, the subject of an endearing ramble around the theme of death, the audience is putty in her hands. She follows this by inserting a pillow speaker into her mouth, a party trick that enables some absurd, self-puncturing vocalisations: preposterously high notes, puerile sucking sounds.
Otherwise, though, Anderson takes care to keep the mood on an even keel. Aside from the interludes that separate her monologues, in which her violin plays mournfully against pre-recorded electronic rustles and samples, she mostly relegates music to a backdrop for her stories. As she speaks, synths hum, bass rumbles and the occasional beats shuffle past: the effect sounds like the 1990s, specifically Massive Attack instrumental offcuts. It feels purely functional, and on that level it succeeds: it's vaguely atmospheric without ever being particularly remarkable. Only when Anderson re-emerges for an encore to essay a gorgeously elegiac solo violin piece that's all too brief does her music contain as much character as her words.
Dirtday!'s success lies entirely in Anderson's personality. At times, she is a touch too neat: her gravitas can be glib, such as when she concludes a section on the US's National Defense Authorization Act with the portentous words, "We might be the enemy ourselves," and an anecdote about visiting a poverty-stricken tent city feels too much like the privileged outsider looking in. But if Anderson is no philosopher, she's certainly a gifted raconteur: her voice is warm and welcoming, her comic timing elegant, and she has a knack for bringing even her most abstract musings to life with the right details. When she combines this with moments of genuine insight, imagination and thoughtfulness, Anderson is the impeccable salon host: one whose guests are made comfortable and their minds fed well.
