HIGH JUMPERS by Tom Kempinski. New End Theatre

London

HIGH JUMPERS
by Tom Kempinski

New End Theatre to 7 October 2001
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS 020 7794 0022
Review Timothy Ramsden 23 September

Ancient Greek comrades face a 1,000 mile agony in a forcefully directed piece.Kempinski’s six characters are more long marchers; some of the 10,000 Greek soldiers left to march a thousand miles home. Xenophon told the General’s version in his Anabasis; here is the common soldier’s account.

Xenophon gave the word xenophobia to English, so no surprise there are tensions between the Athenians and a couple of Spartans who tag along. One, the very unspartan Magadis (Ruaraidh Murray), is a cook by trade and poet by nature. He is the only character allowed to speak direct to the audience, saying men of action fear human softness, but feelings make us what we truly are. And a 1,000 mile march confronts us with ourselves. The angry hardman Democrates (Richard Laing) loses his nerve. Even the born leader Menon (Christian Bradley) comes near despair in a dream where his wife appears to announce his death.

When they reach home, political shifts deny the men admittance to their city. The struggle to stay alive must be its own reward (the point of life is life itself, says the psychiatrist in Kempinski’s best-known play Duet for One).

Gareth Corke’s production vividly creates the tough march, helped by Stephen Hudson’s pounding music. The dangers of enemy territory are illuminated by sudden attacking shafts of light, huddling the men together in the difficult mountain terrain evoked in the remorseless receding peaks of Nicolai Hart Hansen’s forbidding set. Later, it’s dysentery and internal hostilities that combine with exhaustion to threaten survival. There’s less room for visceral theatricality but the performances mostly hold sway in the lassitude afflicting the troop.

Either Kempinski or Corke doesn’t quite pull off the poet-narrator idea; Magadis seems a mop-up device for points not clearly pointed by the action. And New End’s tiny stage limits the director’s hand in expressing the variety of obstacles. But, it’s a promising start to this four-strong Love and War Kempinski season.

Menon: Christian Bradley
Democrates: Richard Laing
Magadis: Ruaraidh Murray
Jason: James Pearse
Polus: Richard Stacey
Leon: Robert Sterne

Director: Gareth Cooke
Designer: Nicolai Hart Hansen
Lighting: Sebastian Williams

2001-09-27 02:49:28