It is agreeably surreal to see the
skeleton of a contemporary bedroom laid out on the Lyttelton stage
against the concrete, sand and sky of the set of
Phèdre. Caryl Churchill’s
1980 play is revived at the National for a clutch of early evening
performances before Racine’s tragedy. Superimposing one set on the
other may suggest that ordinary, modern couples failing to communicate
are as tragic in their way as mythical Greek royalty, or that their
relationships are as stark and barren as the Troezen landscape, or more
simply that Churchill seldom shows us situations straight-on but rather
tweaks them out of realistic kilter so that we can see behind the
everyday. The trouble is that, in this case, the last is both the most
plausible and the least accurate.
It is a simple piece in terms of structure. In three duologues between
couples in bed, each lasting 15 minutes or so, we first see Margaret
and Frank having a flaming row about infidelities real and/or imagined,
then Pete and Dawn of whom the former is too arid to respond
meaningfully to the latter’s existential depression, and finally Pete
and Margaret apparently having found a match in each other but
gradually revealing the same insecurities and insularities.
In Gareth Machin’s production, the bickering between Ian Hart and
Lyndsey Coulson is literally non-stop, with the pair of them shouting
over each other in an impressive piece of staging, but once their
antagonism has been established the scene does not tell us any more.
Pete and Dawn are in a way more articulate even though for much of the
scene they communicate in wordless grunts of interrogation, dismissal
and despair. Hattie Morahan’s Dawn is spiritually as parched as that
Greek landscape, remarking, “I don’t know if I’m unreal, or everything
else,” whereas film buff Pete (Paul Ready) tries to bring her back to
(his) reality by recounting the plot of
Alien. In the final scene the
couple at first seem to do nothing but bolster each other in loving
contrast to their previous experiences, but eventually the weaknesses
resurface… more ominously perhaps, this time Pete’s on about
Apocalypse Now. These bedtime
scenes reveal couples’ most intimate and thus most truthful faces, but
it does not itself have much in the way of profound truth to offer us.
Written for the Financial
Times.