MEN WITHOUT SHADOWS. To 7 July.
London
MEN WITHOUT SHADOWS
by Jean-Paul Sartre translated by Kitty Black
Finborough Theatre Finborough Pub 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 7 July 2007
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 35min No interval
TICKETS: 0870 4000 838
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduced ticket price online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 June
Political processes and pressures under close scrutiny.
World War II lay behind several of Jean-Paul Sartre’s fictional works, like his Roads to Freedom novel trilogy and this drama, set in 1944 France. Anti-Nazi terrorists are being interrogated to obtain details of their leader. There’s not a Nazi in sight, but French sympathisers provide their own torture and brutality.
Sartre’s four scenes alternate between the attic prison and downstairs interrogation room. Only Landrieu among the interrogators has a sense of irony and an awareness the war will be lost by Germany. His two associates are superciliously or physically cruel, abetted by the ever-willing, gun-toting thug Corbin.
Among the prisoners is the play’s only female, the realistic Lucie. Her male companions are concerned about their bravery, fearing cowardice. One finds a new strength in taking his own life. Another, whose resistance cannot be ensured, has to be silenced, on similar lines to the Young Comrade in Brecht’s hardline didactic drama The Measures Taken.
Adam Mottley’s lighting transforms the tiny stage from the attic’s half-lit gloom and fear to the brightly-lit open space of the interrogation scenes. Designer Mamoru Iriguchi uses dark colours and a diagonal wall-section to intensify the feeling of confinement in which the prisoners make their moral explorations around their behaviour.
It’s a play rarely seen and while there’s some sense of the philosopher conveying views from outside the immediacy of the situation, the dialogue offers an unusually subtle account of the pressures of shared responsibility in the face of fear and pain.
Which makes it a shame Mitchell Moreno’s production is so severely underplayed. Speech that’s often near-muttered, coming in jagged rhythms doesn’t itself make for tension or the sense of an unspoken understanding between characters allied by their extreme situation.
The actors rarely convince they are experiencing either the suffering or the power-play of the two sets of characters. This makes it hard to believe they’re living through the situation in front of us, though Charlie Covell’s Lucie and Lawrence McGrandles Jnr’s interrogator, disenchanted with power and trying to rein-in his associates, make a mark in this play of ideas well worth its rare revival.
Francois: George Rainsford
Sorbier: Stephen Sobal
Canoris: Kevin Heaney
Lucie: Charlie Covell
Henri: Jamie Lennox
Corbin: Martin Behrman
Jean: Sam Hodges
Clochet: Andrew Fallaize
Landrieu: Lawerence McGrandles Jnr
Pellerin: David Couch
Director: Mitchell Moreno
Designer: Mamoru Iriguchi
Lighting: Adam Mottley
Sound: Matt Downing+
2007-07-01 01:02:43