Incognito

by Nick Payne

seen at the Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, on 28 May 2016

Doug Hughes directs Geneva Carr, Charlie Cox, Heather Lind and Morgan Spector in a production designed by Scott Pask and lit by Ben Stanton.

The actors take multiple roles in a play in which several story lines are developed contrapuntally, with only sudden changes of lighting indicating a scene change on a black stage with four black chairs. We follow the story of the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein and 'stole' his brain for further research (which is never published); the story of an epileptic whose most severe fit left him with a memory window of only a few minutes; the story of a psychologist embarking on a lesbian affair but hesitant to admit that she has been married and has a grown up son; and some of her interviews with clients.

Elegy

by Nick Payne

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 30 April 2016

Nick Payne seems to delight in concentrated short plays - like his earlier Constellations (reviewed in June 2015) his new Elegy is only 70 minutes long. Directed by Josie Rourke and designed by Tom Scutt, it features Zoe Wanamaker as  Lorna, Barbara Flynn as Carrie and Nina Sosanya as Miriam.

In Elegy Lorna has had surgery for an undefined mental illness, which circumstances suggest is a form of dementia. The surgery involves replacing damaged neurons with synthetic ones, but the consequence is total loss of the memories which the original neurons carried. In Lorna's case this stretches back over twenty years of her life, which in turn means eliminating all her memories of having been married to Carrie.