The Independent from London, Greater London, England • 35

Laurie Anderson has beamed down to take the controls of this year's Meltdown festival and sets her phaser to stun Phil Johnson CaMna) OBCiipHi of InUiplitwy craft; Lnrt Andwton tahee the atngs) Photo; lam aotpwni She came from outer space and Peter Gabriel were to design is. evidently, no nearer to completion. "I see Peter once in a while in New York," she says, "but I dont know if it will ever happen, or if Peter would really like to build it. The closer it gets to being real the more he likes to re-think the basic issues. I think it's a wonderful dream but actually to huiU it would be an anti-dim ax" Anderson, however, still loves theme parks.

"My favourite is Dollywood in Nashville. I was thinking about it because when the sheep was ckmed they called it Dolly, and everyone who works there kmks suspiciously alike, all with the same kind of Smokey-Mountain features, and when you read a list of the credits for the park you realise that they're all Dolly Parton's relatives. So when I think of the sheep I think of the Partonx. Also, when Dolly's in residence, she flics a flag which is this giant bra, and the cloning element becomes the mammary element, like art imitating life." At the ckwe of the interview there's a sudden whoosh and an enormous moth-ership breaks through the Royal Festival Hall's ceiling, entrapping Anderson in a translucent beam that carries her up into the spacecraft's capacious belly. From a balcony on the skle little green men wave their goodbyes to me and the PR woman, and then turn to embrace Laurie in an intimate hut somehow sexless embrace.

Only joking. SMulown rum fiom 30 May to 6 July, at lite SBC. London SE1. Booking and information: M71-V60 -12-I2 things. The aesthetic of the small is very interesting: the tiniest chip, the smallest watch or ear-phone, and it's truly one of my worst fears that I'm a kind of electronic salesperson, like in the last show where I as filing.

'Look at this, it all works don't il'T' You can do that at a trade show. The new show I'll he doing in Meltdown, Spivd of Darkness, is a very dark look at tcchnokigy. and it's just me. playing violin, mixing with my left hand, kinda DJing. and you can sec all the strings." The dosing Warchild gala results, says Anderson, from her work preparing a film on the Red Cross for which she has watched hours and hours of disaster footage.

"Most Hollywood films are 95 per cent people hkiwing each other up." she savs. "and while I don't think that art should be instructional I'm getting a little bit sick about seeing so many bloody stumps. So. I thought, how about a film about rescue and repair?" The idea of the piece is that Brian Eno will he involved somewhere and that the opening sequence will he an orchestration of a dance by Bill Jones. "But in a festival like this there's no time to rehearse." she says.

"It will he the last evening and it's making me incredibly nervous. I think Lou Reed will probably do the vocals and thai musicians will come and go. hut it has all the makings of one of the great disasters and it could last for four hours. I keep saving, 'Keep it simple, keep it simple', and then I do this! But it will he fun." On non-Mcltdown matters. Anderson savs that the much-trumpeted conceptual theme-park in Barcekma that she might be considered unforgivably gauche, it doesn't stop you wanting them.

Other alien presences also intrude, both in her conversation and in the broader frame of reference. Lou (Reed), Peter (Gabriel). Brian (Eno), the Davids (Bowie and Byrne) seem to be fellow occupants of her conceptual spaceship, though they are hardly any more substantial themselves. Much of the Zeit Griff, and the cutting edge of contemporary culture, appears to be the property of people who you just cant imagine putting the cat or the milk bottles out, other than, perhaps, as an ironic assemblage, with one inside the other. Whatever, there's a serious alien invasion orchestrated by Anderson going on in London at the moment and it will last until July.

She is very big in the area of SE1, particularly. Dancing in the Moonlight with her Wigwam Hair, an exhibition cu rated originally for New York's Guggenheim Museum, opened yesterday at the Royal Festival Hall; an installation for the window of Hugo Boss's shop at 184 Regent Street was unveiled last week; and for two weeks beginning on Saturday 21 June, Anderson directing the latest Meltdown concert series at the South Bank, to which she has invited a whole crew of fellow aliens to beam themselves down. Lou Reed, Brian Eno, Robert Wilson and Spalding Gray are just a few of those due to perform, along with violinist Gidon Kremer, jazz spieler Ken. Nordine, one-woman soap opera Heather Woodbury, avant-garde theatre director Richard Foreman, art-rocker means. When she last appeared here in 1995, her solo show was a tcchnikigival feast of cunningly contrived digital imagery, which climaxed in a multiscreen scroll of Internet codes.

It didn't as much embrace the future as roll around on the floor with it in a total, cyberspace-style coupling, though it remained typically cold and objectified at the same time. 'After that tour." she says, "I had a severe reaction and 1 thought, 'What do you need all this stuff for?" When I started off working in multimedia all you needed to know was a few things about a film projector and a little bit about audio and slides. Now you've got to fill your brain with all this useless mid, and the escalation just scares me. I was in Italy and these people from MIT had just come over and they were saying to the Italians. 'You know, unless you really get hooked up and get up to speed, you're going to be one of the digitally homeless' a promise that becomes kinda threatening.

It's like they're left saying. 'Well, we can "Irs quite weird, this pressure to stay up to speed, to get on line, get more memory, more everything, and it's like bankruptcy. For a lot of people I know it's like they're serious speed-freaks and its, torturing them to keep up. It's the most amazing marketing scheme of the century to say to people that they "II be left in the dust, which in the US is their worst fear, truly that they won't be hip or they'll he out of the loop. Where people once wanted bigger cars and higher offices, now they want smaller, tinier Talking to Laurie Anderson Ceels slightly strange, just as you expect it might Though she's surprisingly normal, wonderfully funny and charming, and she talks brilliantly about all kinds uf things, at the back of your mind there's always the feeling that the fashionably dressed woman in her forties sitting next to you in a room at the South Bank might just be some kind of an alien.

Of course, her disguise black leather jacket, designer scarf and elegantly tailored trousers fas impeccable, but that only serves to heighten your suspicions. As she sits on a sofa drinking her coffee and smoking her cigarettes, the famous elfin haircut and puckish grin might well conceal, you think, a utile green woman from To see her as an alien isn't being wilfully flippant or demeaning to Anderson, who is the most famous performance artist in the world. Rather it represents a view based on good oid English empiricism. For what on earth, you want to know, is she on about? Since she first came to prominence in this country via her surprising pop hit of the early Eighties, Anderson has seemed to personify the successful face of the New York avant-garde through richly textured performances that Mend high-art content with sstisfyingty showbiz stage-values. What they actually mean, however, is often blindingly unclear.

They may be litmus readings of our alienation, but you cant readthe readings, and though to look for answers Aito Lindsay and our own much-loved man who fell to earth, Ivor Cutler. There's also the requisite website of Meltdown on-line (http:www.mclt-downxo.uk), a special listening room for audio work, and scheduled talks by the participating artists. On the final day, Saturday 5 July, there will be a gala performance in aid of Warchild on the theme of rescue, dedicated to the work of the Red Cross, which will feature Reed, Wilson, dancer Bill Jones, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and Anderson herself, who will also appear in four other corf-certs. It's a stunningly conceived programme and, on paper at least, Anderson has picked a top-class team for her season. So.

as the sung goes, what's it all about, Laurie? "There are two main themes," she says. instruments and the voice, though there are exceptions to this. I tried to think of people who use their voice in-interesting ways and it's like, what can you do with very little material, what are artists doing, what can you do? And. in terms of economics, it's really nice to see people not spending a lot of money. After all, Broadway docs that very well.

There's also going to be several things that I'm doing myself. Actually, every time I come to London or have a meeting somebody says, "Hey. how about another Both in die direction of the series generally, and in her own contributions. Anderson seems to have dropped the hi-tech trappings of her recent concerts in favour of a newly conceived poverty of HEAD TURNING Symphonic sausage roll without the sausage Casualties of desire David Benedict finds 'Closer' close to the bone mi CLASSICAL LSO Christian Thielemann Btrbktn Centre, London are few things in life more uplifting than a really good Eroica. But when it doesnt THEATRE Closer Nation! Theatre, Cotteskx, London Alice is denigrating Dui bad novel.

"Why wont he write about something that will hurt him? He won't go near hinueil." The same cannot be said for Patrick Marber, whose latest ptav has the dangerous feel of aiucfckigraphy. Unlike most of the hts, Marber isn't of life with little After a brilliant debut with MSN PHOTOS OERADTT LEWIS imperiously ignored Beethoven's first section repeat), one braced oneself for the inevitable gear-change, the strings trudging slowly then gradually, exhausted returning to tempi) the sort of thing that was apparently common currency in prewar Emicai. It came, as expected -but why? This was pure gesture, no sense of inner mison d'ine. Let's not blame the LSO. They gave every indication of trying to realise Thielemann's ideas with conviction, as they did in the single item in the first half: Strauas's Metamorphtaen.

The subtitle of this work is "Study for 23 solo strings" but as far as I could tell, Thielemann doubled every string line throughout the niece. There may be a case for doubling tome passages if the piece has to be played in a Urge concert halL But others plainly demand the subtle expressive intensity that only a solo instrumental voice can give. If Thielemann's Mctamorphosen gained something in tone-weight, it lost far more in immediacy and intimacy; and, almost inevitably, there were intonation problems. As a conception, was a strange experience: intermittently impressive, hut a lot of it low key. quiet passages wanly sentimental or nunpiy impassive.

Having made much of the final climax, Thielemann turned the elegiac coda into a protracted Mahlerian leave-taking the kind of thing Strauss himself is ssid to have found unpalatable in Mahler's symphonies. Would Strauss have been swayed by Ms? I doubt it work, it can be utterly deadening. Within the space of two months, the -Barbican has given us examples of both extremes. At the end of March, Way Gergiev and the Rotterdam Philharmonic gave a performance of Beethoven's Eroka Symphony that will surery live in people memories for years. Broadly traditional in concept, it still managed to turn familiar phrases into thrilling new expei ieuces, and to convey a sense of the whole work as an epic There were moments in the slow movement and finale where I felt my tear-ducts tingling.

Questions of period style were irrelevant: one fdt this was "authentic" to the core. As far Christian Thielemann's performance with the London Symphony Orchestra on Thursday -welL if I forget it as soon as I've finished writing this review, ft won't be a moment too soon. The whole thing was mannered, sententious and hollow: all surface and no substance a symphonic sausage roll with no sausage. As with Gergiev, Thielemann's approach could be labelled traditionalist, but in the -worst sense. Thielemann puUcd the tempo about in the first movement and the slower finale variations in a way that superficially recalled Furtwangler.

But where Furrwingler would have conveyed the impression of spontaneity, Thielemann was grinuypredwable. As the first movement ground towards in dissonant central climax (not quite central here? Thielemann Deoter'i Choke, the tough-minded Cfcw strips men's behaviour bare and you sense that Marber is refreshingly ready to implicate himself in the process. This is Nineties sex comedy but its far from being an updated Move Over Mn iiarkham. British naughtiness and innuendo have been banished. Instead, there are echoes of Pinter's Betrayal or a London take on Mamet's Sexual ftrveitity in Chicago as we follow the interlocked loves and lies of a quartet of characters caught in an almost ritualistic dance of desire.

In the opening scene, Dan has taken a young woman he has accidentally laved from being run over to Baits' casualty department Tersely queatimied by thg imrvvmy frmfmnt.tvml AKrm (excellent Liza Walker), he reveals himself to be in the dying business. He writes obituaries in which he enjoys supping in euphemisms like "valued his privacy" "Means he was gay; 'enjoyed his privacy': he was a raging queen." From here on, the sangnage' is strikingly direct By the end of the short scene, these two strangers are alive with sexual tension as she tells him what men want: "Girls who look like boys to that men can protect them she must come like a train. But with elegance." We next meet them when Dan is having his book-jacket photo taken by Anna, to whom he a instantly attracted. She resists, but he impersonates her when doing cyber-iex on the Web by talking extremely duty and setting her up with Larry, a bullish dersaatoiogist. This virtually silent scene is shockingly funny and a brilliant illustration of all that Marber does best The men's fingers rattle out sex on to the keyboards (and on to a screen on the back wall of Vicki Mortimer's set) but he is actually forcing us to read the subtext The explosive drama of the scene if all in the gap between what the characters are saying and what they actually mean.

Marber writes (and directs) with a scalpel, peeling back layers and cutting effortlessly to the quick. Scenes start immediately with no preamble and you fed the audience hanging upon the words as Marber brutally exposes male manipulation and the desire for honesty in intimate relationships that charges through the play. Appalled by Anna's betrayal, Larry drowns himself in truth, demanding ever more humiliating details of her sexual behaviour with which to flagellate himself, and humiliate her. The scene is very tense and extremely violent but only in terms of language. Throughout the play the characters hardly touch each other.

The writing is so accomplished, it seems almost unfair to point to. its faults. The atmosphere is heavy with ryrnbois. The characters' professions alone feci contrived: a stripper, a photographer (exposure), a doctor and an obituarist (mortality). More worryingh, the couples switch so many times we begin to lose faith in the characters.

"You sec love like a diagram," says Dan and the thought steals over you, does Marber? For all that, thai pungentiy funny, powerfully acted ptay is essential viewing. In rep. National Theatre, Coaabt, London SET (0171-9282252).