TITLE & DEED
Print Room at the Coronet, London W11
Opened 16 January, 2015
****

Like his UK-breakthrough play decade ago, thom pain (based on nothing), Will Eno’s piece comes to London from the Edinburgh Fringe where it was much acclaimed. Also like the earlier work, it is a monologue about loss delivered by an intelligent but embittered man. Which is not for a moment to accuse Title & Deed of being formulaic; it is another prime example of Eno’s ability to send the intellect and emotions in opposite directions simultaneously. As the nameless speaker seemingly rambles about being, as the subtitle puts it, “slightly foreign”, gradually the curious and surreal folk traditions he repeatedly mentions in passing fade into the background behind an increasingly pervasive sense of outsiderdom, which itself grows ever more existential: we all share, simply by virtue of living, the sense of living elsewhere. But we can never share it, because, well, we’re somewhere else.
    
This piece was written specifically for Conor Lovett of Ireland’s Gare St Lazare Players, who have for some time specialised in the work of Samuel Beckett; barely a month ago, Lovett was performing Beckett’s short story First Love across town at the Arcola. There is an unsurprisingly Beckettian feel to Title & Deed, then; but whereas Beckett figures always seem to be parsecs away from those around them, “Man” here seems separated by the merest sheet of glass: thin, transparent, but unbreakable. The fleetingly mentioned, tantalisingly unexplained quirks of his home such as Reverse Weddings or Terrible Saturdays slowly coalesce with equally fragmentary recollections of past times with various partners and with more abstract musings, until the big picture swims into focus: “Time, place, happiness. A person should be able to figure it out. It’s only three things.”
    
Lovett is a low-key performer, which fits his character’s diffidence perfectly (as it should, having been tailored to him). With his baby face, his little remaining hair cropped extremely short, but always the hint that there are hidden depths, he seems like an ingratiating version of Lex Luthor, who is not advancing his master plan but rather searching for one in the first place. After 65 minutes, the piece doesn’t end, it just stops. But it keeps going in your head.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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