In these post-Soviet days, it’s quite a surprise to see something that looks every bit like a statue of Lenin towering over a miniaturized public outside the Dominion Theatre in Tottenham Court Road.
There is such a surfeit of signs here – the name of the theatre, the architecture, the literal ‘elevation’ of Freddie Mercury to beyond stardom and into history, the gilding of the statue which ennobles but also disguises; the physical stance, the microphone threatening the public like a weapon. It makes you want Umberto Eco to come and write an essay on it, if you liked his Travels in Hyperreality as much as I did.
