Tag: Nigel Edwards

The Tell-Tale Heart at the National Theatre review ***

The Tell-Tale Heart

National Theatre Dorfman, 21st December 2018

No panto for the Tourist and family. This year’s entertainment was to be Anthony Neilson’s adaptation of the (in)famous Edgar Allan Poe short story about a writer who, let us say, loses a little bit of perspective. Some concern from our party, particularly those of a nervous disposition, as it gradually dawned on them what Dad had signed them up for, but I can cheerfully report that even LD took all the on-stage frights in her stride. For Mr Neilson, who is also directing, and the rest of the creative team, of which more later, have served up plenty of suspense and, occasionally gory, illusion but it is all undercut with humour and an air of wry parody. More Inside No 9 (though not quite as clever) than Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Now Poe’s original story runs to no more than a few pages and tells of a madman haunted by the “vulture eye” of an old man. His obsession turns to murder which he confesses in fairly short order. So a classic morality tale of crime and punishment with the twist that it is narrated by the unhinged first person. Poe built on the Gothic horror tradition created by Horace Walpole, becoming the father of the psychological horror which film-makers today can’t get enough of, and the scary eye has been a staple of creepy stuff from the dawn of human existence. Check out Odilon Redon’s famous 1883 illustration for a copy of the story shown above. But Mr Neilson was going to need a bit more than that to fill a couple of hours of stage time and to appeal to us jaded sophisticates so Poe’s story has been subjected to some substantial, and largely, successful expansion.

Tamara Lawrance (soooo good in the adaptation of Andrea Levy’s The Long Song on the Beeb recently) plays Camille (or maybe Celeste) a young writer, feted for her first play, but having a bit of difficulty following it up (an NT commission ha, ha). So she holes up in a top floor garret in Brighton, Shining style, to tackle her writer’s block. Her isolated landlady, Nora, an all-in performance from Imogen Doel, is the chatty type, at first a welcome distraction, then increasingly annoying. She comes with a bit of a macabre back-story and an ostentatious patch over one eye. It doesn’t end well.

The story is told through flash-backs and flash-forwards which also involve the copper(s) sent to investigate Nora’s disappearance. It takes a bit of time to get going, though the first half, as Camille and Nora get to, very closely, friend each other, and detective David Carlyle begins his menacing/camp interrogations, doesn’t lack for atmosphere, but the real pay-offs come in the second half, both visually, and plot-wise. Anthony Neilson is probably guilty of a few too many meta twists and references by the end(s), though it does ramp up the breathless WTF quotient, and it doesn’t entirely all hang together, but who cares when there is this much invention on stage.

For designer Frances O’Connor, together with the lighting of Nigel Edwards, the sound and composition of Nick Powell and, especially, the video work of Andrzej Goulding, and everyone in their teams, have conjured up a visual and aural feast. Of course it is artifice, and deliberately so in many cases to keep pace with the knowing tone, but it is still very effective, there are some genuine audience jumps, and, for the slightly sad members of the audience (hello Tourist), a source of endless fun in ticking off the various techniques employed. As the hair-raising manifestations of her own mental state, (or did this really happen or maybe this just a script?), mount up, Tamara Lawrance steps up, never for a moment giving less than 100% commitment. Imogen Doel, and especially David Carlyle, have more in the way of comedy to deliver, which they plainly relish, and there are even a few unsubtle, though still funny, poo-based jokes.

Anthony Nielson I gather is a bit of a one for the collaborative, workshopping approach and his, and I assume, the rest of the creative team’s itch to pack in as much as they can in terms of plot, gags, schlock and stagecraft often shows, but this is still, for the most part, a thoroughly entertaining show that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Act and Terminal 3 at the Print Room Coronet review ***

lars_noren

Act, Terminal 3

The Print Room, Coronet, 13th June 2018

Lars Noren is considered by many of those who purport to know about these things to be Sweden’s greatest living playwright. He certainly looks the part. His writing is oft compared to Beckett and Pinter. The Print Room is a terrific space. The intimacy of fringe with, if you are careful, a comfortable enough perch and an atmospheric bar. And a bargain on Wednesday night. As a dedicated Scandi-phile I was well up for this.

Mind you I had read enough to realise this wasn’t set to be an evening of Cooney-ish farce. Once again I invite you to look at our Mr Noren above, This was going to be spikey, elusive, provocative, an air of brooding unease pervading the whole, in short proper European “art-theatre”. No conventional narrative of course. Past, present and futures unclear. Cast having to work extra hard to earn their corn (which they all did, admirably). Well it certainly lived up to the billing. Which was both good and bad.

Act sets out to explore the “symbiotic” relationship between State and Terrorist and was originally located in West Germany in the 1970s and the incarceration of Ulrike Meinhof. Director Anthony Nielsen has chosen to re-imagine the play in a near future USA post a Second Civil War where “red” secessionist states have been occupied by an authoritarian, left-leaning government. Interesting, a la mode, but ultimately unnecessary in my view, and not immediately obvious from the dialogue. G, venomously played by Barnaby Power, albeit with an improbable Southern drawl, is a doctor for the regime, holed up in some makeshift hospital/prison full of symbolic Americana. Temi Wilkey is M, the enemy of the state set to undergo further (?) examination/interrogation. They may have had a past encounter. There is little in the way of argument or context in their exchanges which are more along the lines of a psychological arm-wrestle as each takes their own experiences and beliefs to alternately cajole and belittle the other. I guess the overriding aim is, Foucault-like, to show the inter-dependence of captive and captor, and there are some arresting lines, as it were, but it was frustratingly opaque.

Terminal 3, again some 45 minutes or so, was a little more straightforward, but not by much. Two couples emerge either side of a screen centre stage courtesy of designer Laura Hopkins, imposingly lit by Nigel Edwards, and with buckets of dry ice. It transpires that Man and Woman (of course Mr Noren doesn’t dilute his art with names), Barnaby Power and Hannah Young have come to a hospital chapel of sorts to identify the body of their dead son. In contrast He and She (!), Robert Stocks and Temi Wilkey, are in a hospital as She is about to give birth. At least I think that was the set-up. This then becomes the stepping off point for a dense exploration of the impact of the beginning and end of life on the two couples. Mr Nielson’s direction, as the couples seem disorientated by their situations, fumbling in near darkness towards the end, (terminal ?), was unyieldingly gnomic.

So puzzling, inaccessible, provocative. Yes. And maybe just a bit daft. Yep, maybe. But here’s the thing. Like so many of these more challenging theatrical experiences it does stay in the memory, and sometimes for longer than more straightforwardly enjoyable entertainments. I have a recollection that none other than the mighty Caryl Churchill once said that she aimed to create a few lasting impressions in the audience for her plays. Anything more not being possible given the nature of memory. She might not have said this though given she doesn’t say much and my memory is fallible, or do I mean malleable. You get the idea. Not saying these two short plays really qualify but, by making me search for meaning, they might persist.