HERE WE GO
National
Theatre at the Lyttleton
25.11.2015
A
new play by Caryl Churchill. Brief, even for a one-act offering.
Tripartite. First, the “funeral party for a man with an adventurous
past” - drinking champagne in
hospital
is mentioned.
Mourners
stand around awkwardly, wine-glass in hand, making small talk
interspersed with intimations of their own mortality – or pithy
autopsies – and recollections of the departed. Rarely is a sentence
finished, but instead of a naturalistic blending or overlapping, each
speaker seems to apply the brakes – a disconcerting effect.
Then
a masterly monologue by the dead man – a disembodied torso in the
darkness – a confusion of ideas about the [possibly overpopulated]
afterlife: Chiron, Valhalla, Purgatory. A powerful performance from
Patrick Godfrey.
Then
an extended image – Godfrey again, with a patient Hazel Holder –
perhaps of end-of-life futility, or perhaps eternal damnation,
echoing Marlowe's Faustus - “Why this
is hell, nor
am I out of it.”
Too
much of an eternity for some, exiting early through the Lyttleton
doors before the final fade to black.
Dominic
Cooke's uncomplicated direction lets Churchill speak, though
I'm not sure what she's getting at in this black triptych.
