seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 27 July 2017
The Orange Tree Theatre, in partnership with St Mary's University Twickenham, is presenting five short plays directed by graduates of the MA program developed by the two institutions.
3. Albert's Boy, by James Graham, directed by Kate Campbell
In formal terms the most conventional of the five plays featured in this festival, Albert's Boy imagines the meeting of Albert Einstein (Robert Gill) with Peter Bucky (Andrew Langtree), the son of family friends returning from service, and imprisonment and torture, in the Korean War. This is the opportunity for impassioned debates about the nature of war, the ethics of using nuclear weapons, Einstein's own guilt at having encouraged the research in the US - dilemmas which in the succeeding decades have not been resolved.
The play is set in Einstein's siting room, chaotically strewn with papers and books as the great man wrestles with the intractable problems of the Unified Field Theory. The young man is a welcome guest, but there are also tensions due to their very different experiences. The two actors conveyed the awkwardness, and the conviction, of the two men, although the play itself runs the risk of being too didactic, with set piece speeches from both characters articulating the horrors of both conventional war and the dropping of an atom bomb on a civilian population. The latter is given by Einstein as he tries to write to his estranged son, eccentrically confusing him as 'Little Boy' with the so-nicknamed Hiroshima bomb. The old man's pent-up grief and guilt are poignant; mourning for a dead pet cat only adds to his confusion as he wonders why this should provoke tears when the enormity of war does not.
4. The End of Hope, by David Ireland, directed by Max Elton
Dermot (Rufus Wright) has met Janet (Elinor Lawless) through the internet for an evening of casual sex, rendered more than slightly strange by the fact that she is dressed as a giant mouse. The social awkwardness of having a conversation after such an encounter is exemplified as well as being comically undercut by this weird physical presence.
Dermot is articulate and easily provoked into tirades about such matters as the vacuity of ITV and the betrayals of Tony Blair. Janet is down to earth and resolutely unflustered by all his astonishment that she has never heard of Friends (she claims not to watch Channel Four); and she likes Tony Blair's hair. All this is highly amusing social comedy - but there are serious issues as well. The mouse costume is a protection which Janet is extremely reluctant to remove - she claims that God has told her to wear it; but it also masks a deep lack of self-confidence. When Dermot does persuade her to reveal her face, he finds her really beautiful, and the dynamics shift subtly but decisively as he reveals the extent to which he has lied about his own situation. But the comedy resurfaces dazzlingly as Janet undercuts his self-esteem by completely failing to recognise his claims to celebrity. The cross-purposes are brilliantly written and delivered, and there is a chance of a real rapprochement at the close of the play.
It's not easy to spend half a play in a mouse costume and yet convey a mixture of steely resolution and untroubled naivety, nad nor can it be easy to play against such a figure, but this was an enjoyable and at times touching production.
5. Misterman, by Enda Walsh, directed by Grace Vaughan
This play was memorably presented at the National Theatre a few years ago with Cillian Murphy taking the title role. Here, Ryan Donaldson took on the challenge in a shortened version of the play which nonetheless places huge demands on the actor even in such a confined space.
Thomas Magill is the wayward late-teenaged son of a widowed mother, laughed at by the other youngsters in the village and perhaps indulged or lightly teased by the adults. But he has a mission from God to excoriate evil and redeem the world; everything is related by him with the help of recordings he has made of his daily routines, and only gradually do we become aware that behind all the disarming enthusiasm and disconcerting moral outrage something irrevocably dreadful has happened.
It's an astonishing performance in the unforgiving intimacy of the Orange Tree, with Thomas manically keeping track of his thoughts, helping himself out with various props, and delivering an almost ceaseless narrative interspersed with occasional pieces of dialogue where he takes both parts (if he does not have a recording of the other half ready to hand). The play packs a powerful punch even on a second viewing (that is, when the denouement is known), and here, the director and actor have created an intense piece of work that was a fitting climax to my attendance of the Director's Festival
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