GOD IN
RUINS
Soho
Theatre + Writers' Centre, London W1
Opened 5 December, 2007
****
Anthony Neilson believes in keeping his audience interested and
entertained. That could sound like the most conservative of theatrical
credos, mere lip-service to dignify safe, unadventurous fare. The
actual result is anything but. For Neilson's yardstick is what
interests him and the cast with whom he works in rehearsals, gleaning
ideas and relationships from them, writing and rewriting as he goes
along. As soon as he feels he has done all he can with a particular
set-up, he will either jolt it on to a radical new track or else
abandon it entirely, as happens a handful of times in this 90-minute
piece.
To be sure, it feels ragged and undisciplined when the house lights
blaze up as the action is interrupted by a probably ghostly (and
certainly metatheatrical) Gulf War veteran, confronting us with the
modern reality of the Christmas beggar. It is scarcely less tenuous
when the reformed, cheerful Scrooge, a character in protagonist Brian's
stalled screenplay, visits Brian to steer him through a series of
magical flashbacks in his quest to contact his daughter for Christmas
against his ex-wife's wishes. It suggests a form of attention deficit
disorder. But the crucial point is that it keeps working as theatre, a
live experience that enlists us in playing around with different modes,
registers and levels.
Neilson normally works with a known pool of actors; for this RSC
commission, however, he was given an unfamiliar company of eleven, all
male, resulting in a more blokish piece than his average. Drunkenness,
cybersex, media satire (Brian produces a reality TV show called Chimp Monastery!) and the crisis in
early-middle-aged masculinity are all present and predictably
incorrect. The company includes two of my favourite Northern Irish
actors, Patrick O'Kane and Sean Kearns... but I never thought I'd see
them playing Bob Cratchit and an unbearably merry Scrooge as in the
opening scene, still less that by the end they would metamorphose, in a
hilariously accurate coup de
théâtre, into a couple of virtual-reality avatars,
with Kearns resembling an anthropomorphised Pepe Le Pew in puce Lycra.
Every year the competition gets tougher for the most "alternative" yet
none the less faithfully seasonal Christmas show; I think the 2007
round has found its winner already.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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