May 23, 2007
It’s a little hard to imagine yourself back into the minds of the 1921 first night audience of this celebrated “experimental” play, who were so horrified by it that they wanted to lynch the author. Weary veterans of ghastly family secrets that we are, we see much worse than this on CSI every week and would be more inclined to advise him to see a therapist. However, though no longer shocking, it is a very effective piece of theatre when played straight, as this production is, as a sort of unravelling mystery, a piece of psychological investigation; and this new translation and the introduction of the clever updating of the actors, make the play more alive and direct.
A group of modern-day actors meet to rehearse a play. Just as they are getting stuck in, the six 1920s characters emerge from a trapdoor in the floor and Ancient Mariner-like insist on telling their story, in the hope that their tragic history will be sufficiently interesting for someone to write it down and produce it. And it is – quite gripping, in fact, for someone who doesn’t know the story in advance. As the assorted skeletons are duly unearthed from their various closets, the audience is also treated to a number of discourses and demonstrations, on the artificiality of the theatre as a medium, on the nature of personality, the nature of history, the creation of the illusion of emotional truth, societal norms in provincial Italy in the 1920s, sexual obsession, grief, rage.
For a play this consciously artificial and this wordy to work well as drama is a tribute to the director and his cast of no small order. It almost seemed like an ordinary play, except for the framework of the idea that the author has rejected these characters as too twisted to work with any more, and the duality of the play within a play (Shakespeare got there first). One of its drawbacks is that the ensemble cast is rather large, which means that some of them were under-used; but this is a quibble. The actors were uniformly splendid, but we must single out the wonderful pairing of Corinne Sawers as the Stepdaughter - literally incandescent with rage at the frightful things that have befallen her, as her gleaming white arms, throat, and back emerge from her rusty black dress – with Charlie Morrison as the Father, crippled by guilt and shame but still fighting for self-justification. In addition to being quite astoundingly beautiful, she’s all feminine, the principle of passion; he’s all intellect and delivers most of the existential arguments with the modern-day director (the excellent Leo-Marcus Wan). Also shining in much less rewarding parts were Natasha Kirk as the grieving mother and Charles Reston as the disconnected older son.
The dramatic impact was well-delivered and intense; the contrasting light comedy well-done – we especially enjoyed the scenes where the Characters were criticizing the actors’ feeble impersonations of them, and the Actors’ responses, varying from selfish petulance to extreme discomfort, at the spectacle of the Characters disintegrating the traditional concepts of marriage and family life before their very eyes. Unusually in a student production, the whole supporting cast were very strong, and indeed one almost wished we could have seen more of the Actors rather than those tiresomely demanding Characters. Oh, and the music was really good too. Get down there and see it!
A group of modern-day actors meet to rehearse a play. Just as they are getting stuck in, the six 1920s characters emerge from a trapdoor in the floor and Ancient Mariner-like insist on telling their story, in the hope that their tragic history will be sufficiently interesting for someone to write it down and produce it. And it is – quite gripping, in fact, for someone who doesn’t know the story in advance. As the assorted skeletons are duly unearthed from their various closets, the audience is also treated to a number of discourses and demonstrations, on the artificiality of the theatre as a medium, on the nature of personality, the nature of history, the creation of the illusion of emotional truth, societal norms in provincial Italy in the 1920s, sexual obsession, grief, rage.
For a play this consciously artificial and this wordy to work well as drama is a tribute to the director and his cast of no small order. It almost seemed like an ordinary play, except for the framework of the idea that the author has rejected these characters as too twisted to work with any more, and the duality of the play within a play (Shakespeare got there first). One of its drawbacks is that the ensemble cast is rather large, which means that some of them were under-used; but this is a quibble. The actors were uniformly splendid, but we must single out the wonderful pairing of Corinne Sawers as the Stepdaughter - literally incandescent with rage at the frightful things that have befallen her, as her gleaming white arms, throat, and back emerge from her rusty black dress – with Charlie Morrison as the Father, crippled by guilt and shame but still fighting for self-justification. In addition to being quite astoundingly beautiful, she’s all feminine, the principle of passion; he’s all intellect and delivers most of the existential arguments with the modern-day director (the excellent Leo-Marcus Wan). Also shining in much less rewarding parts were Natasha Kirk as the grieving mother and Charles Reston as the disconnected older son.
The dramatic impact was well-delivered and intense; the contrasting light comedy well-done – we especially enjoyed the scenes where the Characters were criticizing the actors’ feeble impersonations of them, and the Actors’ responses, varying from selfish petulance to extreme discomfort, at the spectacle of the Characters disintegrating the traditional concepts of marriage and family life before their very eyes. Unusually in a student production, the whole supporting cast were very strong, and indeed one almost wished we could have seen more of the Actors rather than those tiresomely demanding Characters. Oh, and the music was really good too. Get down there and see it!