PYRENEES. To 30 April.

Watford

PYRENEES
by David Greig

Menier Chocolate Factory 53 Southwark Street SE1 To 24 April
Tue-Sat 8pm Sat & Sun 3.30pm
then Palace Theatre Watford 26-30 April 2005
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed 2.30pm Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7907 7060
www.menierchocolatefactory.com (Menier)
01923 225671
www.watfordtheatre.co.uk (Watford)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 April

Excellent script, direction, performances: an outstanding dramatic exploration of human identity.After the feather-ruffling Mercury Fur Paines Plough has another, very different winner in its This Other England' quartet. David Greig's play (from Glasgow's Tron) is the most upfront yet in tackling the season's linguistic impulse, originating in Radio 4's Routes of English'. A middle-aged man has been discovered in the mountains with no memory of who he is or any past life. It's the start of an intriguing journey into identity.

Vicky Featherstone's excellent production adds a wordless opening where the hotel Proprietor, a sinister-edged character who will claim all kinds of national identities in his make-up, sets up his terrace with tables and chairs. Against this ordering of life, the script begins with consular official Anna's problem handling a tape-recorder and misusing slang, while the Man she's interviewing has whatever bank of knowledge I built up what's missing is my place in it.

This estranged sense is matched by Greig's fresh, cool, border mountain setting and a style to match in his prose-poem script and Featherstone's spare, taut direction. Music has a dual use; a song broadcast within the hotel undercuts intense moments and supports the Man's realistic voyage to himself, while Nick Powell's soundscape heightens key moments of wonder.

Hugh Ross, unshowily excellent as always, makes an inexplicable situation seem rounded and real. Puzzlement, the need to question his own vocabulary and vocal tone for what they tell about identity, surprise at reactions to some of his language these go with occasional moments of irritation for which he's deeply apologetic. He provides what actors are rarely asked to give a subtle discrimination of physical and mental operation devoid of an overall sense of continuity.

Paola Dionisotti's excellent too as the woman claiming to be his wife. Her quiet containment appearing in an elegant evening dress is her most overt moment implies a huge past reflected in the generation-old photos she brings. By contrast it's Jonathan McGuinness's proprietor and, particularly, Anna (Frances Grey, excellent), nervously excitable and with affinity to many parts of Britain, who provide the whirl around this pool of quiet searching. Wonderful stuff.

The Man: Hugh Ross
Vivienne: Paola Dionisotti
Anna: Frances Grey
The Proprietor: Jonathan McGuinness

Director: Vicky Featherstone
Designer: Neil Warmington
Lighting: Natasha Chivers
Sound/Music: Nick Powell

2005-04-04 10:43:20