Several years ago the film-maker and
social critic Adam Curtis collaborated with immersive theatre company
Punchdrunk on a live/installation/video piece,
It Felt Like A Kiss. The result was
an uncertain hotchpotch. Mike Bartlett’s latest play is much closer to
the spirit and argument of Curtis, particularly the latter’s notions
that political and corporate powers deliberately confuse the rest of us
in order to forestall coherent protest.
Bartlett’s play begins in a hotel room, apparently in Moscow. A man is
being erratically wooed to ally himself with the organisation
represented by an eccentric woman. No real-life names are used, but to
all intents and purposes this is a version of Wikileaks attempting to
recruit Edward Snowden on an ongoing basis after his sensational
revelations. Jack Farthing as Andrew (not Edward) is for the most part
required to be passive, or ultimately acquiescent; here, it is
Caoilfhionn Dunne who gets to riff, bounce and generally mess with his
head, as if Tigger had become a KGB interrogator. It is a performance
that deserves to make Dunne’s reputation.
Eventually, though, she needs a break, and is succeeded by the lanky,
understated John Mackay, who insists that he is the real representative
of this quasi-Wiki outfit, and ratchets up Andrew’s paranoia both about
possible attempts on his life and about what is and is not real and
trustworthy. Then Dunne’s woman returns, and finally they both work on
him as a double-act, eroding the last vestiges of his certainty even in
such a basic concept as trust.
At this point, James Macdonald’s customary careful, precise direction
is entirely and deliberately eclipsed by the stage itself, as the
shifts in Andrew’s perspective are made breathtakingly literal. This
must be the only occasion in my reviewing career when I have found
myself observing anti-spoiler conventions concerning the set design.
Suffice it to say that even by the exuberantly inventive standards of
Miriam Buether this is a doozy. Just as the wordiness about who is
really who and why, in either a particular or a general sense,
threatens to grow stultifying, we are given an almighty jolt to plunge
us into the very bewilderment (and final capitulation) that Bartlett is
anatomising. Quite literally off the wall.
Written for the Financial
Times.