(seen 3rd November 2009)
During its opening run at a Rome opera house in 1921, Pirandello’s edgy enquiry into the art of theatre cut into audiences’ sense of decorum so trenchantly that they shouted things in protest. From today’s point of view, Six Characters in Search of an Author is rather mild-mannered, a whimsical investigation into theatre’s identity that’s gently challenging to the student of humanities and frightfully boring for everyone else.
Six fictional characters, transcending their reality, rock up to a drama rehearsal with a curious request for an impatient director whose cast are late. They say they’re characters in a possible story needing to be realised by a dramatist. The director is comically appalled by their indecent intrusion onto his set to begin with, but is gradually proselytised by the pithy tragedy they forcibly (re)present to him. The main point being made – deep breath – is that characters in a play are meaningless until they’re mediated by actors, but that once mediated they become necessarily distanced from their essence, and so ultimately characters in a play are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The moral of the story is theatre is a place for illusion and anyone striving for realism on stage is kidding themselves. Which is why this play should be hammed up with lots of artifice and pomp, like it was in Mark Thomson and David Harrower’s colourfully comedic production last year.
Of course, Oxford University undergraduates have nothing like the kind of resources that the National Theatre of Scotland has and it wouldn’t be fair to penalise this production for its frugality. The price of admission patently reflects this- for a conveniently located and fit-for-purpose venue like this £5 is the closest we’re going to get to free, and what we ought to expect is a modest but insightful production based on an astute reading of a difficult play by thoughtful students who have spent time mulling over the detail. But that’s not what we get in this rendition by Pint Flusher Productions. If this student clique did get to grips with this play, it doesn’t show, and we get no helping hand in understanding what the playwright’s getting at and why what he’s saying is interesting.
This version is apparently a new translation. It’s by second-year classicist Chiara Crean who spent a summer working on it, and, frankly, I can’t fault it. Nor can I comment on where the nuances are, what’s remarkable about it, or why it needed a new translation, but it seemed good. Director Madeline Wright’s contribution is inconspicuous with the actors running amok in wild competition with each other. Mickey Down, in particular, is overbearing in the role of the energetic ‘Director’, and he should never have been allowed on stage with that ridiculous cobra staff which hyperactively slides up and down his grip when he speaks. It’s like a spasm, and very distracting. Hillary Stevens is poignantly tearful as ‘Mother’ and Joshua Hall is commendably controlled in his role as the conflicted ‘Son’. Both performances are humiliated in the raucous farrago of the ensemble. The lighting scheme is effective in conveying the different levels of reality in the play whilst the decision to stage this in the round is trivial and boggling. Surely a play about drama is best off with a traditional proscenium arrangement?
Tags: BT Studio, Burton Taylor, Hillary Stevens, Joshua Hall, oxford, Pirandello, play, Playhouse, review, Six Characters in Search of an Author, student, Theatre, university
