AMERICAN NIGHTS. To 29 July.
London.
AMERICAN NIGHTS:
‘dentity Crisis by Christopher Durang &
2+2+2 by Jorg Tittel.
Kings Head Theatre 115 Upper Street N1 To 29 July 2007.
Tue-Sat 8pm Sat & Sun 3.30pm.
Runs 1hr 40min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7226 1916.
www.kingsheadtheatre.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 July.
God bless American dissent and wild social satire.
This is like a step back to the heady days when American experimental theatre was creating angry, challenging new work. Such work may seem simplistic, but has a kick, especially in the second play here.
Christopher Durang’s 1978 ’dentity Crisis recalls the sixties psychiatric dominance of R D Laing, seeing madness as socially-conditioned. Young Jane sits silently in her pink dress. She’s the character to ‘dentify with as the insanity of middle-class American ‘normality’ erupts around her.
Mother hears doorbells before they ring, believes she’s invented foods or puts together crazy concoctions; her inappropriately-loving son, husband, lover and aged father are played by one actor. There’s a sex-changing psychiatrist and his gender-bending wife.
Sherrill Gow’s cast provide high energy, and the belief all’s natural in this world, leaving Clare Wilkie’s subdued, puzzled Jane anchorless, defined by others as having mental issues.
Jorg Tittel (born the year of Durang’s play) uses the seven days of creation to show the destructive impact of routine. His arithmetical title refers to the sole breakfast menu item at the diner where Abe, routine-bound opposite to his influential Presidential namesake, calls each morning. His relation with equally-institutionalised Sarah Lee, the server there, is doomed by the capitalist system as George Orwell’s Winston Smith and Julia were by more open totalitarianism.
Tittel’s work, written in an emergency over a week has the style of something done in a hurry, rough-hewn, unsubtle, mono-track but vigorously theatrical. It’s driven by the alternate blasts and rhythmic energy of Joanna Bruzdowicz’s spiky score, which defines a world of stress and hurry.
The 2-D black-and-white set, with passing days and objects chalk-scrawled on walls; watching TV while using the urinal beneath sums up junk TV, its programmes variations on mass-appeal to simplified emotions.
Richard E Grant’s voice booms authoritarian demands from the air while the author directs suitably energetic performances onstage, including his own Abe, Kimberly Butler’s willing then frustrated worker, Alasdair Shanks standing in as callous management and Penny Lisle as Abe’s work-ethic, leading him on, her voice silenced in her taped-up mouth as she scrawls Abe’s daily routines for him.
’dentity Crisis:
Jane: Clare Wilkie.
Edith: Nancy Baldwin.
Robert: Christopher Giangiordano.
Summers: Andy Pandini.
Woman: Andrea Sadler.
Director: Sherrill Gow.
Lighting: David Duffy.
Composer: Ian Brandon.
Costume: Clare Amos.
Assistant director: Alex Barson.
2+2+2:
The Voice: Richard E Grant.
Abe: Jorg Tittel.
Sarah Lee: Kimberly Butler.
Suitcase: Simon Hepworth.
The Worker: Penny Lisle.
Understudy: Alasdair Shanks.
Director: Alex Helfrecht.
Designer: Nathan von Boeventer.
Lighting: David Duffy.
Sound: Tim Garratt.
Composer: Joanna Bruzdowicz.
Movement/Assistatn director: Jelena Curcic.
Costume: Claire Amos.
2007-07-18 07:08:20