November 28, 2006
Old telephone exchange names were a thing of mystery. The named exchanges of old might have mostly just described neighbourhoods, but as Goddard’s hero wondered in Pierrot le fou, what was gained by naming some after the great and good, and what was lost by their passing, replaced by mere numbers on a dial. Switch Triptych, which plays until Saturday at the Burton Taylor, is set at New York’s Public Library exchange in 1919, at the eve of the automation which will radically change the character, and sex, of the telephone industry.
At the centre of the piece is Lucille, stunningly played by Sian Robbins-Grace. A fast talking Italian-American who loves beautiful women almost as much as she loves the Pope, she sits for the first act centre stage, enthroned on a stool with a glass in one hand and the ladders in her black stockings catching the spotlight. Lucille is playwright Adriano Shalplin’s American Eve, and she acknowledges that the fall is not very far away. ‘You ain’t never been to Brooklyn’, her flighty co-worker Pippa tells her, and more than anything else this gives the audience what it needs to know about Lucille. Because this is New York, and because this is the twentieth-century, her sagacity is unquestionable despite her entire American life having been lived on Manhattan. Telphones for Lucille are the invention that will keep us all at home, in our place, as there’ll be no need to endure the discomforts of train travel or take a plane ride when the world is at the end of a wire. What’s the need when they eat tongue abroad, and in New York when Lucille catches the eyes of strangers she can ‘smell their children’.
Despite Shaplin’s script giving all of its many brilliant, image laden lines to the perfect creation that is Lucille, the other members of this cast are far from supporting players. Amy Tatton-Brown as interloping Limey union organizer June, and Owen Findlay as overseer Andrew, both give their characters a lively humanity which fits well with the cramped feel that the intimate stage space of the Burton Taylor gives to their office.
It is a long time since I have seen a play that so successfully hangs on such a huge, comprehensively drawn character, and even longer since I have seen such a character so effectively played. The poetic dialogue of Switch Triptych sends images rushing around one’s mind in the way a taxi rushes round Lucille’s beloved New York, even though, as she testifies, she does not need a stage as every street of her beloved city of the future is stage enough.
At the centre of the piece is Lucille, stunningly played by Sian Robbins-Grace. A fast talking Italian-American who loves beautiful women almost as much as she loves the Pope, she sits for the first act centre stage, enthroned on a stool with a glass in one hand and the ladders in her black stockings catching the spotlight. Lucille is playwright Adriano Shalplin’s American Eve, and she acknowledges that the fall is not very far away. ‘You ain’t never been to Brooklyn’, her flighty co-worker Pippa tells her, and more than anything else this gives the audience what it needs to know about Lucille. Because this is New York, and because this is the twentieth-century, her sagacity is unquestionable despite her entire American life having been lived on Manhattan. Telphones for Lucille are the invention that will keep us all at home, in our place, as there’ll be no need to endure the discomforts of train travel or take a plane ride when the world is at the end of a wire. What’s the need when they eat tongue abroad, and in New York when Lucille catches the eyes of strangers she can ‘smell their children’.
Despite Shaplin’s script giving all of its many brilliant, image laden lines to the perfect creation that is Lucille, the other members of this cast are far from supporting players. Amy Tatton-Brown as interloping Limey union organizer June, and Owen Findlay as overseer Andrew, both give their characters a lively humanity which fits well with the cramped feel that the intimate stage space of the Burton Taylor gives to their office.
It is a long time since I have seen a play that so successfully hangs on such a huge, comprehensively drawn character, and even longer since I have seen such a character so effectively played. The poetic dialogue of Switch Triptych sends images rushing around one’s mind in the way a taxi rushes round Lucille’s beloved New York, even though, as she testifies, she does not need a stage as every street of her beloved city of the future is stage enough.