Tom Fool

by Franz Xaver Kroetz

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 31 March 2022

Diyan Zora directs Michael Shaeffer as Otto, Anna Francolini as his wife Martha and Jonah Rzeskiewicz as their son Ludwig in Estella Schmid and Anthony Vivis's translation of Kroetz's play entitled Mensch Meier in German, here rendered as Tom Fool to catch the undertone that Otto Meier is both hapless and pitiable, but also something of an everyman.

In a domestic setting of cheap furniture and minimal comfort (excellent design by Zoe Hurwitz), Ludwig is sleeping on the living room sofa, trapped by his parents' aspirations for him: they castigate him for not earning his keep, but disapprove of his plan to take up a bricklaying apprenticeship because he could do better. Otto works in a car assembly plant, dependant on job security and only half aware that he is sapped by the relentless tedium of the work. He agonises over the awkwardness of having lent his boss an expensive pen which has not been returned - his lengthy analysis of the situation, and the difficulty of raising the matter days after the event, shows in microcosm the stifling social forces engulfing him, forcing him to brood on petty slights until they become an obsession. A later intense discussion about a restaurant bill shows us a mind restless to analyse but constantly presented only with mundane objects of attention (though of course money is tight, so it is vital not to be cheated).

Martha is patient and supportive with a sort of weary tolerance, while Ludwig is disaffected but powerless; his act of rebellion coinciding with the shock of mass redundancies at the assembly plant tip Otto into an unexpected and spectacular bout of rage. It is rare to see so much destruction wreaked on furniture in such a confined acting space, but a stroke of dramatic brilliance to have it followed not by an interval so that the stage crew can clear up the mess, but rather by a protracted scene in which Otto and Martha wordlessly mend furniture and sweep away the broken shards of their domestic life.

In ways such as these the playwright has pinpointed the suffocating pressure of 'ordinary' life, the man of the house bound on a treadmill but with the uneasy thought that he could be let go of at any time, the housewife eking out a domestic haven until it becomes unbearable, the next generation paralysed by uncertainty and resentment. Only a tentative recognition that each of them must learn to look after themselves before taking on responsibility for each other provides a modicum of hope that the bleak cycle of uncomprehended frustration may one day be broken.

This all sounds unbearably depressing, but it was electrifying to watch, with excellent performances from all three actors and a steady direction allowing the all important silences to signify as much as, if not more than, the awkward attempts of the characters to communicae their feelings and frustrations to one another, and hence to us.