HALF LIFE. To 5 November.
Perth
HALF LIFE
by John Mighton
Perth Theatre To 5 November 2005
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat 5 Nov 2.30pm
Audio-described 3 Nov, 5 Nov 2.30pm
BSL Signed 5 Nov 2.30pm
Runs 1hr 35min No interval
TICKETS: 0845 612 63222
www.horsecross.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 October
Pure, last minute coincidence but I saw John Mighton’s play (a co-production with Necessary Angel Theatre Company in the author’s native Canada and also seen at Glasgow Tron) the day after Oldham’s production of American David Auburn’s Proof. Both dramatise family situations built around old age and failing mental powers. Mighton’s nursing-home setting focuses on two mid-career people Anna and Donald, respectively visiting their father and mother, and their parents’ burgeoning, sexual relationship. Locksmiths might have kept them apart, but not modern security doors, given Patrick’s code-cracking past.
Auburn’s play, what’s more, is about father and daughter mathematicians while maths is Mighton’s day job. Daniel Brooks’s production is suitably precise and clinical in style, while Andrea Lundy’s lighting contrasts half-light and sudden blazing intensity, reflecting both mental clarity or muddiness, and the contrasts between the young visitors’ tentativeness to each other plus their difficulties with parents on one hand, and Patrick and Clara’s near-instinctive love, uninhibitedly expressed when life’s most apparently time-limited.
They’re a perfect match, Patrick with his thoughtful approach, Clara with a beauty of mind and manner even as her memory fails. Mighton surrounds them with half-known characters, an irate fellow-patient, plus the Home’s chaplain and an ideal-seeming Nurse, apparently taking advantage of residents’ trust and age to siphon off their money.
Order is necessary in the institution, with its disordered minds, but the love-affair challenges its restrictions. Brooks’ directorial style reflects the setting; understated and hygienic, played with cool intensity contrasting the lovers’ mutual delight with defined movement patterns and subdued sounds between scenes. As does Dany Lyne’s bare-stage set, incorporating only what’s needed for the moment – bed, chairs, table. The only major set element’s a screen, for a scene testing whether Donald can tell if he’s talking to a person or voice-machine. The most clinical scene here, it pays a deep dividend at the end. How Mighton would finish his web of relationships becomes a keen critical question. This mathematician’s play ends magically, capturing emotional and thematic threads as the screen appears a second time, with Clara’s voice replacing the machine, but no-one around to hear.
Patrick: Les Carlson
Anna: Laura de Carteret
Agnes: Barbara Gordon
Clara: Carolyn Hetherington
Tammy: Maggie Huculak
Donald: David Jansen
Rev Hill: Robert Persichini
Director: Daniel Brooks
Designer/Costume: Dany Lyne
Lighting: Andrea Lundy
Sound: Richard Feren
2005-11-03 09:15:33