DEATH OF LONG PIG To 1 August.
London.
DEATH OF LONG PIG
by Nigel Planer.
Finborough Theatre above Finborough Road Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 1 August 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3pm.
Runs 2hr One interval.
TICKETS: 0844 847 1652 (24hr no booking fee).
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduced full-price tickets online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 July.
Artists’ lives and loves in the South Pacific.
There are plenty of plays about the lives of dead artists. By concentrating on their last days Nigel Planer manages to include two together; or, rather, separately. Both Long Pigs (in certain climes a term denoting a white man ripe for eating) are Europeans who relocated to late 19th-century Polynesia. In Samoa, 1894, a Scottish writer rehearses his death surrounded by loyal local servants and family members who bicker and complain.
A sudden ending brings a sharp change of mood, prefiguring the second act, set three years later in Tahiti. French painter Paul Gauguin has more querulous inter-racial relations, his local mistress concerned for make-up and a hair-brush, he looking for a death he cannot find.
Both are condemned to leave their island paradise, and Planer makes clear how provisional any sense that they have reached a paradise must be when the baggage - internal or external – of the past remains.
His first act works beautifully, the wide gap between writer and Samoan servants making for a happier relationship than with nagging, importunate relatives. The second is more problematic. Gauguin travelled alone to Tahiti, so instead of a three-way dynamic there’s the more familiar mix of jaded European meeting innocent acceptance of life on the island, with a late lapse into the recounting of native beliefs, even if freshened as a critique of Christianity.
Still, the play makes a fascinating link between the two artists’ experiences. And Alexander Summers’ Finborough production is exemplary, with finely contrasted portrayals from Sean Murray as artists benign and darker-hearted, contrasting one’s relief at a reprieve from death with the other’s furious search for oblivion, Nicole Dayes as a grieving servant and demanding mistress and Anthony Ofoegbu as two eagerly energetic islanders, the fussily subservient Obliging Bob and happily argumentative Tiko.
Amanda Boxer crosses continents, fine both as nagging wife and serene blind Polynesian matron, and there’s capable support from Colm Gormley. Alex Marker’s design expertise in this space creates two atmospheric locations, stone statues looking down on the plainer Samoan setting and the colours in Tahiti, where matters close with a beautiful, eternity-invoking lullaby.
Louis/Pigo:Sean Murray.
Obliging Bob/Tiko: Anthony Ofoegbu.
Java/Teha’amana: Nicole Dayes.
Fanny/Othermother: Amanda Boxer.
Joe Strong/Ben: Colm Gormley.
Director: Alexander Summers.
Designer: Alex Marker.
Lighting: James Smith.
Sound: Andy Evans.
Costume: Penn O’Gara.
2009-07-27 11:20:10