THE UGLY ONE
Royal
Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London SW1
Opened 18 September, 2007
****
For some 12 or 13 years now – this is neither an exaggeration nor a
joke – I have been almost entirely unable to bear seeing my own image,
whether reflected or photographic. (The picture which sometimes appears
by my name on this page is out of date.) I do not know whether that
makes me more qualified, or less, to comment on Marius von Mayenburg's
play about the commodification of image.
Lette is told one day that he is in fact hideously ugly, and no-one had
ever mentioned it because they assumed he must know and was bearing it
heroically. He has his face entirely reconstructed, and suddenly "I
look like someone I'll always envy." What follows is preferential
treatment at work, becoming almost universally desired by both sexes,
and paid appearances as advertisement for his plastic surgeon. As
Lette's smugness and arrogance increase, though, his face begins
appearing on others: the surgeon is selling exactly that face... though it
cannot be called "Lette's" face. Cue reversal of fortune, material and
personal downfall as Lette's wife now has her own pick of perfection,
and ultimately identity crisis so entrenched that the final minutes of
speech in this 55-minute production consist of what Daffy Duck once
called "pronoun trouble".
Ramin Gray's staging is visually rough: there is no image concept for
us to transfer our attentions on to. Michael Gould's Lette sits in a
swivel chair, rotating between auditorium benches on three sides of him
on which sit the other three actors, each playing two or three roles
all with the same name. Von Mayenburg's script flows continuously, so
that characters change in mid-conversation, and at one point in
mid-copulation. It could be played as absurd farce, but Gray permits
only Lette to show emotion, and then only to a modest degree. The other
three are all matter-of-fact, whether Frank McCusker propositioning
him, Amanda Drew as his wife denying that sleeping with his
identically-faced work colleague is infidelity, or (in particular) Mark
Lockyer explaining how he is now a facial artist rather than a mere
doctor. We are all devout consumers of the looks industry, but seldom
if ever stop to consider that in some cases a face literally does not
fit.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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