“The brain is a storytelling machine and
it’s really, really good at fooling us.” So says neuropsychologist
Martha in Nick Payne’s latest play, which sets out to illustrate that
that organ’s greatest illusion is to make us believe that there
is an “us”, an “I”, behind it all.
Payne blends real-life figures with fictitious characters. The three
main plot strands concern pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey, who at
post-mortem in 1955 took Einstein’s brain in an attempt to find out
what made the genius tick; the amnesiac patient known to medicine as
H.M., who after a brain operation lived for over 50 years in a
continuous present without forming subsequent memories; and the
bisexual Martha, whose secrecy about her past damages her present in
2014. He emphasises that, despite the historical presences, the play is
a work of fiction, “but then, isn’t everything?”
Joe Murphy’s nimble production, which comes into London from the
HighTide festival, origamis over 20 characters into (or out of) a cast
of four. Paul Hickey, Amelia Lowdel, Alison O’Donnell and Sargon Yelda
morph from scene to scene and sometimes from sentence to sentence; for
much of the time we have to take it on faith that there is continuity
and connection. Which, of course, is the point. Even Oliver Townsend’s
design makes its own comment, placing the action in a gap in the middle
of a cube of networked steel tubing; it’s in the irregularities where
the interesting stuff takes place.
Payne collected an armful of awards a couple of years ago for
Constellations, a love story set in
the parallel universes of quantum theory.
Incognito, with its numerous
questions of mind, brain and identity, is more ambitious, more complex,
more demanding on an audience… and more successful. Whether it is
Thomas Harvey, deluding himself about the importance of his jars of
grey matter; Henry, even at the age of 80 still awaiting the arrival of
his long-dead wife so that they can go on their honeymoon; Martha,
railing at the world which won’t behave conveniently for her; or the
spectator, piecing together the mosaic of brief scenes, assembling
stories and themes and forging a personal (ha) relationship with the
material… we are all just getting by from moment to moment, working on
the puzzle. And as with all the best puzzles, we are left with a sense
of emotional as well as intellectual fulfilment.
Written for the Financial
Times.