EDGE. To 13 March.

London

EDGE
by Paul Alexander

King's Head Theatre To 13 March 2004
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS: 020 7226 1916
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 February

For once roller-coaster' seems the right description ups and downs, twists and turns in a sensational performance.She could be alive still, in her early seventies. Instead, American Sylvia Plath became 20th century poetry's most celebrated suicide on 11 February 1963, aged 30, while all around her, according to poet Philip Larkin, sexual intercourse was just beginning. Not for Sylvia, who endured the alleged sexual violence of husband poet Ted Hughes in the late 50s,then psychological torture in a desolation from which she claims hubby's new lover was phoning-in encouragement to kill herself.

Seven years on this paramour followed Sylvia to the oven, stuffing her lungs, and her daughter's, with deadly coal gas. Paul Alexander's script comes from years of studying Plath, the high-grade Boston, Mass. poetess whose wedding to ruggedly handsome Hughes must have marked them out as a golden couple rivalled only by the Arthur Miller/Marilyn Monroe marriage.

What this exhilarating ride through the corkscrew complexities of Sylvia's brilliant mind perceptive, ironic yet supercharged with emotion never declares is how much Plath was death-bound even without the demanding father and (we're told) self-obsessedly careerist husband. It's a problem with one-person, single viewpoint plays: who referring again to Larkin fucked her up? Dad? Ted? Or was there a tinder-box personality in there anything might ignite?

At Hampstead's New End Theatre last month, Angelica Torn's remarkable performance seemed more fraught as a quiet audience looked down from the raked seats onto a small acting-space. At the King's Head, a wide, raised stage offers a greater sense of performance to, rather than observation by, the audience. And a larger crowd picked up more humour, making for an interaction which gave a more realistic feel.

Some changes may have been chance there seemed less on father's perfectionism rather than rewriting. Alas, the act two look into Hughes' future remains, jarring with the life flashing before us on the point of extinction.

It scarcely matters. In a concentrated high-speed performance, Angelica Torn's voice grasps some points, floats others with ironic casualness, while the body often creates fidgets indicating emotional disturbance under the verbal brilliance. It's a stunning performance in a provocatively revelatory piece.

Sylvia Plath: Angelica Torn

Director: Paul Alexander
Costume: Gabrielle Hamill

2004-02-05 16:10:38