DEATH AND THE PLOUGHMAN. To23 November.
London
DEATH AND THE PLOUGHMAN
by Johannes von Saaz translated by Michael West
Gate Theatre To 23 November 2002
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 1hr 10min One interval
TICKETS 020 7229 0706
boxoffice@gatetheatre.freeseerve.co.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 13 November
Another Gate surprise: not an easy ride but a cerebral adventure.Back in 1401 this was cutting-edge stuff, in a world still medieval enough for death to govern the human mind, medically unwalled against great plagues and little viruses, socially and economically agriculture-dominated so as to make a ploughman a neat Everyman. But it's unplagued by realism - as the Gate's brave staging shows, even if its insistent modernism imposes an unexpected style in the process of livening-up and clarifying what's essentially less drama than formal debate.
Yet it's fair to stage the piece. For von Saaz also articulates fierce personal feelings. His Ploughman's agonised, grief-driven anger is autobiographical. Author and character alike had just lost a young wife – in real life, ironically, in childbirth.
The Ploughman's search for Justice – the basic subject of this debate - recurs in dramatic conflicts throughout theatre, from the Oresteia on. And Justice is subject to Fate: 'Death is not a kingdom you can choose not to enter,' Death exclaims (well, it would say that, wouldn't it?). But the same speech moves on to the near-existential: 'Either your pain is too great or you are losing your senses.'
The script's divided into 34 'chapters', mostly monologues by the young Ploughman – Simon Meacock having more the tone and manner of a philosophy student (true to the script, unless von Saaz knew some extremely furrowed-brow furrow-followers) - and Death, here distributed between three actors.
Deborah Bruce's production has a coolness that works in a limited way: Death is no Hollywood-spook but an organic part of the process of life. It adds up, but it doesn't quite seem the right size for the script's injured, questing energy. The contained acting style which so suits the Gate works against the full-throated oratory. Here's Death consoling the Ploughman with a wife's wicked ways: 'She can schemer, flatter, deceive, caress; she can grumble, laugh or cry; all these she can do in the blink of an eye, from the day of her birth.'
For all Michael West's familiar phrasings, the script keeps such a patterned, formal flavour. To have death presented variously as a chairperson/examiner, portfolio-clutching official and argumentative mate, is to bring in characterisations that don't exist. Yet it also gives variety and provokes a sense of argument.
Death: Madeleine Bowyer
Death: Tim Barlow
Ploughman: Simon Meacock
Death: Ben Nealon
Director: Deborah Bruce
Designer: Imogen Cloet
Lighting: Katharine Williams
Sound: Jason Barnes
2002-11-15 23:21:17