THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
This sparkling revival of one of the great classics of the French ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ couldn’t have more perfect casting than the real-life couple Kathryn Hunter and Marcello Magni, who give us a masterclass in physical comedy.
In a house on an island a nonagenarian couple pass their time with private games and half-remembered stories. They receive a series of invisible guests and formally set out chairs for an imminent gathering where the Old Man intends his ‘message to humanity’ will be delivered by a Speaker.
Magni was one of the founders of the acclaimed physical theatre ensemble Theatre de Complicité which quietly transformed British theatre making from the 1980s. Steeped in mime, he trained with Jaques Lecoq and recently much of his time has been spent collaborating with Peter Book in Paris. Olivier winner, Hunter, who is currently wowing ‘em in Joel Coen’s movie The Tragedy of Macbeth, is a doyenne of avant-garde theatre in the UK and one of our most versatile and singular artists.
Puckish, pint-sized and elfin thin, Hunter's husky deep voice can veer from warm to disquieting. Here, in an orange fright-wig, a black dolls’ dress, and red shoes (Cécile Trémolières and Naomi Kuyck-Cohen’s set and costumes are beautifully apt) she resembles Bette Davis in her Grand Guignol Baby Jane days. An inspirational physical performer she has the Old Woman’s geriatric sluggishness down perfectly, but with her incredibly expressive eyes, filters in too the eternal spirit of a rascally teenager. She fulfils Ionescu’s demands that the characters be deliberate archetypes or ‘ubermarionettes’, trapped in a cycle of frantic routines. She’s attentive and loving and ready with a tart response, whilst her husband is agitated and self-regarding. Both draw out the humanity of the couple who share all our common anxieties and desires and weakness for nostalgia.
Dressed in a morning suit, to receive his guests, Magni’s Italian-accented English is formal and gives him even more of the air of an ingratiating Maître d’. He perfectly captures the laziness of that bourgeois class, with their endless small talk, whom Ionescu targeted for sleep-walking us all into two World Wars (the play dates from 1952).
Director Omar Elerian (formerly of The Bush theatre) uses a new translation which gives it a contemporary sheen without undercutting the intention of the piece. At the time it was at the vanguard of a backlash against stage realism, which for Ionescu and Beckett had nothing new to say. The delight of the piece is how it constantly draws attention to its own artifice and makes the audience bring its own imagination to bear. Communication has broken down here and Ionescu eschews logical thought as argument has given way to the irrational. What could be more ‘now’?
Elerian has added a very witty new prologue which I won’t spoil (don’t be late) and also, less successfully, changed the ending. Here Toby Sedgwick plays the ‘orator’ but also acts like a stage manager for the old couple throughout and has a wonderfully rambling speech at the end about what he had been intending to do. Ionescu’s great joke was that when the Speaker finally arrives he is a deaf mute.
