At the end of one scene in Patrick
Marber’s 1997 four-hander, stripper and self-described “waif” Alice
exits in high dudgeon from an argument with Anna. Each is now involved
with the other’s ex, and not by mutual consent. It's that kind of
plot, which makes for a deal of emotional intensity, in this case
anger. But as Rachel Redford strode along the vomitorium through the
audience, I could see that her eyes were partly teared up. To go to
such lengths for only the few of us close enough to make out that
detail in the dimness of the auditorium suggests an impressive
commitment to emotional truth on Redford’s part.
Ironically, in a play about the ambiguous values and consequences of
those grand universal virtues truth and love, Alice is the one
character not cripplingly attached to veracity. Also, as it happens,
Redford is the only actor who is not a sizeable name. Photographer Anna
is played by Nancy Carroll, obituarist and aspiring novelist Dan by
Oliver Chris, dermatologist Larry by Rufus Sewell. It is the kind of
cast to give your eye-teeth for, and all four take David Leveaux’s
direction with the skill and commitment one would expect. It’s just
hard to make some of the moments, well, ring true: Alice’s suppressed
tears seem more credible than either Dan’s or Larry’s free-flowing ones
at other points.
In many ways, however, this is a strength of Marber’s drama rather than
a weakness. He alternates between naturalism and near-melodrama to make
us question characters’ sincerity to themselves more than to anyone
else, as they couple and decouple with each other professing grand
passions – and believing in them – when seemingly more often motivated
simply by lust. Time and again, truth comes principally as an
embarrassment or an obstacle; it may lead to clarity but never to
happiness.
The play has not dated as I feared it might have: the notorious scene
when Dan (pretending to be Anna) and Larry engage in pornographic
messaging in an Internet chat room does not seem stale simply because
they would now be doing it via a mobile phone app. Bunny Christie’s set
is timeless as well as placeless, leaving us to focus entirely on the
quartet and ponder Dan’s question, “What’s so great about the truth?”
Written for the Financial
Times.