Triple Exposure

by Ian Cullen and Drew Launay

seen at Camberley Theatre on 17 February 2017

Ian Cullen directed a rehearsed reading by the Farnham Rep of a play he co-wrote with Drew Launay and completed after the latter's death.

Julia and Adrian have been living together for a year or so, mainly it seems at Julia's expense (Adrian is a freelance writer and photographer; his photographs may be seen by some as pornographic or at the very least exploitative). Julia is about to leave to visit her sick ex-husband; Adrian is unwilling to exert himself to pronounce a strong aversion to her going. Misunderstandings about commitment and freedom are thus given plenty of opportunity to raise themselves and cause confusion.

After Julia leaves, a young woman arrives and invites herself in. Given what we know about Adrian's lifestyle, it seems entirely possible that some more exploitation is about to take place. The encounter is somewhat peculiar, not least the ease with which this young woman, Cassie, makes herself at home with Adrian's acquiescence. (This is possibly a weakness of the play's construction: I missed the point at which Cassie introduced her name - but perhaps it is supposed to have happened during the scene break). Cassie probes Adrian's past and reveals she is his daughter (he abandoned his wife before the child was born).

Naturally when Julia returns unexpectedly, she assumes the worst and at first refuses to believe Cassie's claim. Even when she accepts it, the two do not get on and insist that Adrian should choose between them. Adrian, one of those men who hates to hurt anybody, is unable to sit on the fence but the outcome of his teetering is not entirely clear.

There are disadvantages to a rehearsed reading as opposed to a fully learnt play - the presence of scripts and the occasional stumbling are distractions - but there were some pungent observations of character and a generally well-thought-out series of interactions between the various characters. How an emotional ditherer like Adrian could pursue a career on the seedy side of photography and writing was not entirely convincing, and both Julia's impatience with his work and Cassie's apparent approval of it were perhaps too conveniently left unexamined. Other plot reveals are good for dramatic tension, but perhaps risk some plausibility - though they do remind us that people are often less revealing of themselves - and less consistent in their behaviour - than they like to think themselves. However, one suspects that the encounters in the play would, in real life, cause considerably more anguish than we saw.