TAKING CARE OF BABY
Hampstead Theatre, London NW3
Opened 4 June, 2007
****
A few years ago we had no real sense of verbatim theatre as a genre;
now, the Tricycle Theatre organises a tribunal of its own so that it
can stage the transcripts, and here the increasingly interesting Dennis
Kelly mimics the verbatim form in order to indict the gaze of the
public eye itself.
Donna McAuliffe was first convicted of murdering her two infant
children under the influence of a newly identified psychological
disorder, then freed when an appeal dismissed the expert psychological
testimony. Taking Care Of Baby
follows Donna's readjustment, the ambitious ascent of her mother in
local politics, and the doctor whose pet syndrome has been discredited.
The first thing we see is a video caption: "The following has been
taken word for word from interviews and correspondence..." It is
repeated several times through the play, but in increasingly garbled
form, as the hand of the supposedly impartial interviewer grows ever
clearer. We hear his disembodied voice more and more often,
interrupting the doctor almost Paxman-style whilst affecting to remain
calm and mild; when Donna's estranged husband agrees to an interview
consisting only of "yes"/"no" questions, it is evident that the
questions can only be what this Big Brother persona "Dennis Kelly"
chooses them to be. (I write this feelingly, as one who was stitched up
several years ago by the off-camera presence in a fly-on-the-wall TV
"documentary".)
The McAuliffe case is loosely based on some similar recent high-profile
instances; Abigail Davies gives a remarkable performance, showing us
the cracks in Donna's personality and her wounds without making it all
about these flaws. If the characters of doctor and (especially) mother
grow progressively less believable as their conduct is pushed to
extremes, this is less important because by then we are aware that the
characters really under
examination are not on the stage. They are, firstly, the person
assembling and editing the story, and secondly we who devour news,
"reality" stories and all kinds of celebrity with diminishing
discrimination. "The average broadsheet contains more information than
someone in the Middle Ages would have assimilated in their entire
lifetime," Dr Millard tells us; this may be another invented factoid,
but it rings true. Politico, chat-show guest, scientist, murderer,
innocent... all are equal grist to our info-mill.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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