Diary: Music In 'Toby And The Wolf'

The atmosphere on Monday morning is already different from that of the preceding week, not least because there is a new dimension in the rehearsal room: musical instruments. Some, like the drum kit, look familiar, but others are strange and were they not gathered together near the recognisable instruments, might be mistaken for junk: pieces of jagged metal, several different sized flat rocks, dozens of small bells hanging from a rope, white sticks of various length and thickness that hang like wind chimes, and a curious instrument that looks like a small bucket (it contains some water) from which protrude about a dozen metal rods of ascending height. This, we subsequently learn, is played with a cello bow and produces a rich and resonant sound.

It isn't long before Terje's influence is felt and the effect of his playing impacts on the actors. His is no ordinary discreet musical accompaniment, Terje's s work is bold and sometimes, as in the story of 'Toby and the Wolf', he is literally centre stage. The story tells how an old farmyard dog is seduced by the silky rhetoric of a wily wolf into betraying the interests of his master, a farmer, with almost disastrous consequences. Its visual centrepiece is an elaborate pile of farmyard junk containing amongst other things an old armchair with its springs exposed, a tractor tire, a battered lawn mower, a wheelbarrow, an ancient bird cage, a large empty oil drum, the wheels and chassis of a discarded carriage pram, and an old water boiler. But this impressive statement of the farmer's neglect of the farmyard is actually the basis for a giant musical instrument: Terje, wielding two bunches of thin twigs bound together with sticky tape, plays the objects, creating a cacophony of percussive sound to which he makes frequent guttural additions with sounds produced in his throat.