Really Old, Like Forty Five

In many ways this is a timely play: there is current public debate about how society could or should deal with an aging population; and how issues of humanity and compassion can be offset against the economic demands of government and the healthcare industry.

Written by Tamsin Oglesby, Really Old, Like Forty Five – whose action appears to take place in the near future – does indeed set out to look at these issues. The story concerns three aged siblings (reliably played by Marcia Warren, Judy Parfitt and Gawn Grainger) in varying stages of dementia or physical decay. It looks at their relationships with each other and younger generations, and raises the notion of the old having to adopt non-biological grandchildren in order to receive government subsidies and maintain their independent existence.

This strand of the narrative is counter pointed by the scientific and economic machinations of a trio of government advisors. Their domain is suspended above the main stage, which suggests that they have a god-like status in their dealings with and manipulations of the merely mortal elderly.

Altogether the play raises many serious and complex issues. However, while it deals with them in an occasionally amusing fashion, it lacks any dramatic analysis of the subject and fails to give any idea that the characters are anything other than sit-com stereotypes – the batty but feisty old lady masking her physical decline, the eternally youthful older man looking increasingly inappropriate as he tries to maintain an ageless guise; the pregnant teenager with a heart of gold; the scientist brought down by his craven submission to political and economic expediency.

The one outstanding creation in Really Old, Like Forty Five is a robot nurse. Even this character - exquisitely played by Michela Meazza - is actually no more than a camp fantasy, which generates easy laughs without being at all thought provoking in the wider context of the play’s concerns.

Ultimately, this is a rather a disappointing evening’s theatre. It feels like an opportunity missed or an early draft of something that needs more work and context to turn it into a powerful and entertaining drama, rather than the cosy comedy it is at the moment.

Cottesloe Theatre (until 20th April)

Pains of Youth

Ferdinand Bruckner wrote Pains of Youth in 1926. The play is set in Vienna three years earlier and is about six medical students and their tangled emotional lives. Relationships within the group are broken and change; there is sexual ambiguity; the characters argue and exploit each other – as well as the young female servant in their lodging house. The action – and dialogue – is often repetitive. It is not clear if this is meant to signify anything – perhaps the characters are going in circles and repeating the same mistakes – or perhaps it is simply a narrative shortcoming.

It all ends badly when one of them, Desiree, commits suicide. Again it’s not clear if her action is due to a general bourgeois malaise or ennui, or if it’s because lesbian relationships are doomed and can only end in death and madness.

However, the language of the play – in a new version by Martin Crimp – is robust and works well – despite, and sometimes because of, its repetitions. The staging is striking – as you’d expect from something directed by Katie Mitchell. The set somehow manages to be both minimalist and cluttered at the same time. There is live music and the soundscape is integral to the production. The performances exude a nervy edginess; which, again, seems to be a characteristic of Mitchell’s work.

The acting is uniformly good, although Laura Elphinstone as Marie and Lydia Wilson as Desiree stand out. Geoffrey Streatfield playing the older and more debauched student Freder also gives a noteworthy performance as a manipulator sliding ever deeper into destructive alcoholism.

The programme for the play contains articles about its historical context – the state of Austria post WWI and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, together with the resulting economic uncertainty of the 1920s and the growing spectre of fascism. Allied to this attention is drawn to the progressive and groundbreaking artistic climate of the time which gives the staging much of its meaning and significance. So, we read about Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schoenberg and twelve-tone music, Swedish gymnastics, Javanese dance and the art movement New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit). Although all this helps contextualise the drama in the minds of its audience after the performance, it doesn’t make its meaning any more significant or resonant while we are actually watching.

Cottesloe Theatre until January

Panic

Panic is the latest work from Improbable. They are a theatre group who have been responsible for a number of highly entertaining and ground-breaking works over the past decade or so – Shockheaded Peter, The Hanging Man, Theatre of Blood, Wolves in the Walls as well as a production of Phillip Glass’s Satyagraha at ENO. Currently they are in The Pit at the Barbican Arts Centre.

Panic is about the goat god Pan mainly and consists of a number of short-ish scenes. Some are more obviously Pan related than others. Phelim McDermott – one of Improbable’s founding fathers - is Pan. And there are also three nymphs. In addition, there is live music, sound and a number of filmic projections. As well as this there is imaginative use of brown paper, and rather a lot of paper carrier bags filled with self-help books.

The show starts with the cast breaking the fourth wall, talking directly to the audience and introducing themselves. Then we’re away into the woods and nature in the raw; the Pan story starts on its rambling way.

McDermott parades in his underpants and later straps on a giant wicker penis. He penetrates a dining chair to much hilarity. There are stunning projections on to the brown paper scenery – haunting images of nymphs from previous eras.

In another scene there is aerial work from Matilda Leyser over a recumbent Phelim McDermott that suggests Henry Fuseli’s 18th century painting The Nightmare. But in this instance – and from the audience’s perspective – the view is a mirror image of the picture – possibly because what we now see is a woman demon astride a supine man.

Another visually inventive section is called ‘Panography’ – it is a sort of masturbatory fantasy, with a life-size shadow theatre Pan and the silhouettes of tiny dancing women.

This is followed by an amusing section where Phelim McDermott reads out the titles of large numbers of self-help books. Their titles are self-evidently ridiculous and meaningless, and the scene’s power lies in the fact that it goes on stating the obvious and labouring the point for rather too long –just like a self-help book in fact.

A further striking image is of a large photo of many faces that grows smaller and smaller and ends up as a tears in the eye of a giant photo of Buffalo Bill. It is a powerful – indeed moving - image, but its ultimate meaning or contribution to the Pan theme is not clear.

The cast are energetic and engaging, the production skilful, inventive not to say magical at times; and altogether, this is an intermittently fantastic piece of work demonstrating the infinite possibilities of theatre. However, overall it leaves the feeling of being somewhat less than the sum of its considerable parts.

Pit Theatre, Barbican until 16th May

The Overcoat

Inspired by the Russian writer Gogol’s short story of the same name, The Overcoat is performed by physical theatre company Gecko.

The clue to their interpretation is in ‘inspired by’ and so the play’s narrative doesn’t match to closely that of the short story. Neither did it especially coincide with my own view of how the story might be brought to 21st century life. In a programme note the director and actor Amit Lahav says he’s dealing with the inner life of the protagonist rather than the detail of the original story. He therefore introduces a romance into the narrative, so that it all becomes – as the publicity tag line has it – ‘get the coat get the girl, change the world’. The original was more prosaic – essentially it was get the coat, get warm in Tsarist St. Petersburg – and was (in my view) more politically intriguing.

However, this take on the story has its own strengths. The central character lives in sordid lodgings. His parents watch him from a portrait on the wall. He has sexual fantasies. His landlady seduces him. Meanwhile he works at meaningless tasks as part of a cog in an office machine.

When there is dialogue in the play it is in the language of its multinational cast – Italian, Chinese, Hungarian, French. What this does is place the onus of communication on body language and tone of voice. It is effective –but, of course, the words could be sonorous banality rather than poetry.

The ‘hero’ eventually gets the coat – but is it at the cost of his soul? Has he made a pact with the devil? Did he really get the girl or was that his fervid dream? The narrative thread is ambiguous.

What is not ambiguous is the talent of the performers. They give a strikingly powerful and committed demonstration of what physical theatre can achieve. There are a number of startling moments and striking tableaux. There are thrills and danger – intriguing lighting. Some of the cast have previously worked with the David Glass ensemble – and this influence is apparent and adds to The Overcoat’s power.

The music – a mix of original composition and existing work – is eclectic in a World/Eastern European fusion style. It does in fact work well.

The night I saw it, the theatre was not full – but the audience response was justifiably enthusiastic.


It finished at The Lyric Hammersmith last Saturday, but can be seen at Theatre Royal, Plymouth from 23 - 25 April.

Madame de Sade

The third play in Donmar West End’s current season at Wyndhams Theatre is Madame de Sade by Yukio Mishima. It is translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene and directed by Michael Grandage. It stars Judi Dench as the Marquis de Sade’s mother-in-law - but the best performances come from Frances Barber and Rosamund Pike.

The story spans 18 years before the French revolution and looks at de Sade and his influence from the perspective of several women who represent differing points of view about his behaviour. His wife – the character played by Rosamund Pike - remains loyal to both him and what he does throughout. It is only at the end of the play – when, having been released from prison, he returns to her family home – that she rejects him. Perhaps the reality of an aged dissolute being is less attractive than the intellectual concept of what he could be and the behaviour he stands for.

There is little action but much discussion in the play – or rather there is less discussion than there is a series of monologues. The views of the religious and sybaritic (the Comptesse de Saint-Fond; played superbly by Frances Barber) are presented, as are the views of the innocent, complicit and manipulative. Sadein practices are described rather than seen – somewhat in style of Greek tragedy.

The proletariat – in the guise of the servant Charlotte – is always in the background; until the denouement, that is, when we get an idea that the guillotine may beckon for some. Charlotte is a character of few words, but eloquent body language, and is brought to life convincingly in Jenny Galloway’s performance.

There are three acts, played without an interval, and a single set, which is an 18th century room. It is superbly lit throughout, showing different seasons of the year and providing an animated backdrop for – not only the action before us – but also the actions and emotions and events that are being described. In many ways the set and lighting are perhaps the true stars of the show.

This is a production that requires concentration and involvement. Neither its physical beauty (great though it is) nor the fine performances of all the actors (as good as they are) is enough to sustain an audience’s interest for the hour and forty-five minutes Madame de Sade lasts.

Plays until 23rd May