This is Living

by Liam Borrett

seen at the Trafalgar Studios Two on 6 June 2016

Yet another short intense play, although this production is lengthened by having an interval. Liam Borrett directs Michael Socha as Michael and Tamia Kari as Alice in his own play about coming to terms with devastating loss. Sarah Beaton designed the extraordinary set; the acting space is a sheet of black plastic raised on a small dais, and covered with a thin film of water.

Michael is cradling Alice at the beginning, water seeping into their clothes. Alice is totally unresponsive at first, then chokes out a mouthful of water and behaves as if awaking after a party binge. Flashbacks show the couple's courtship and the strain of Alice's miscarriage, then their delight in having a little girl. But all the while, the question is pressing - is Michael dreaming all this? How will he allow himself to let Alice go? Or are we also witnessing Alice's gradual acceptance of the situation she must confront?

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.