NIGHTSONGS. To 23 March.
London
NIGHTSONGS
by Jon Fosse, translated by Gregory Motton
Royal Court, Jerwood Theatre Downstairs To 23 March 2002
Runs 1hr 35min No interval
TICKETS 020 7565 5000
Review Timothy Ramsden 5 March
Things have got gloomy in Norway since the days of Ibsen, judging by Katie Mitchell's production of the country's leading modern playwright.It's rare a curtain actually rises on a modern play; here, two rise, revealing a traverse stage minimally outlining a living-room, and the other section of audience beyond. Clock faces around the auditorium show differing times while between scenes speaking-clock announcements go haywire in maddened fragmentation.
Which is pretty much what's happening as time passes for the anonymous young couple at the centre of the mournful Nightsongs. Even their baby can't unite them, as the father mopes round the house, a writer whose major activity is opening the latest rejection slip. The Mother feels constricted and goes off for a night out with her girl friend. Who turns out to be her partner-in-prospect, Mike.
To call the Young Man's suspicions and Young Woman's evasions a row would be to magnify the whispered hesitancies and near-silently spit-out vitriol. Mitchell uses the small space she's sculpted from the Court's stage and stalls for a detailed intimacy between the characters that's accentuated after the opening scene. Here, his parents visit to take a look at baby. Their nervous bonhomie magnifies the unease, Christopher Saul sat cloth cap in hand, hands working restlessly, Gillian Hanna all smiling spurts of attempted sociability falling flat off the young couple's deadness.
The whole action then sinks into a gloom worthy of Beckett at his most despondent. Fosse's short, verse like lines in Motton's translation are matched by the nervous pacing, she like a caged animal, he like someone with nowhere to go. Cullen's lover, when he arrives, is a glum enough prospect, all passion hidden under a cheap coat and layered with an uncertainty that communicates itself to her at the crisis moment of decision.
How much does the intense neurosis of this world originate in Fosse, how much in the production? It's not a style that suits the sudden melodrama of the Hedda Gabler-ish conclusion. Do all Nordic writers keep a gun handy for the moment when inevitable failure hits home?
What's sure, in a fine cast, is the colour and intensity concentrated in Sophie Okonedo's Young Woman, with her captive tiger bristling rage. Her performance is definitive.
Mike: Jonathan Cullen
Mother: Gillian Hanna
Young Man: Paul Higgins
Young Woman: Sophie Okonedo
Father: Christopher Saul
Director: Katie Mitchell
Lighting: Paule Constable
Sound: Gareth Fry
Artistic Consultant: Antoni Malinowski
2002-03-07 12:50:27