REALISM. To 19 August.
Edinburgh
REALISM
by Anthony Neilson
Royal Lyceum Theatre To 19 August
Runs 1hr 30min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 August
Powerful, cunning and humane beneath the surface cruelties.
Though Anthony Neilson’s acquired a reputation for writing plays as rehearsals proceed, he knows where he’s going, as the title of this National Theatre Scotland production for the Edinburgh International Festival makes clear.
It’s not ‘Reality’. Realism is a literary/artistic style (the adjective ‘realistic’ has a wider use). At first it meant treating the surface details of life. As that involved including everything it became linked with the sordid, in physical circumstances and human behaviour. Then someone noticed (just in time with Freud et al coming along) reality is often precisely what’s not on the surface. If Chekhov employs Realism, is it in his characters’ everyday behaviour or in the cracks through which unexpressed feelings surface?
Stuart McQuarrie’s life is displayed realistically in Miriam Buether’s set. Many everyday appliances are there (all but the kitchen-sink – another term created in shock reaction to Realism): washing-machine, sofa, lavatory pedestal, bed, but each isolated on a sand-covered slope. That’s life; so many mundane elements, all detached among the desert of living.
Stuart McQuarrie plays his teasingly-named namesake with the offhand comic edge this fine actor so ably shows. Neilson’s Realism incorporates realistic fantasies. Mother’s voice nags and advises from the washing-machine (delightfully choked when it’s filled with clothes). A junk ‘phone call is replayed several times as McQuarrie tries the increasingly assertive responses his handsomely confident alter ego suggests, then suffers the guilt of feeling unreasonable as he’s reminded how cruel he’s possibly been to a salesman who might just have every sympathy-signal under the sun.
There’s gruesome material, involving a lover and the lavatory, but their reality can hardly be dismissed given the disclosures of royal telephone conversations. Even death doesn’t end things – a funeral with all in black, except already-dead mother flying in wearing white, the cat grumpy as ever (there’s realism). Nielson examines what his McQuarrie’d do if he had his life again, before finally establishing Realism as it’s generally understood. A fitted-kitchen, a cup of tea, with nothing eventful happening.
This is a stunning, bleak yet heartfelt piece, magnificently presented; a tough, deserved triumph for both EIF and NTS.
Cast:
Paul Blair, Louise Ludgate, Shauna Macdonald, Stuart McQuarrie, Sandy Neilson, Jan Pearson, Matthew Pidgeon
Director: Anthony Neilson
Designer: Miriam Buether
Lighting: Chahine Yavroyan
Sound/Composer: Nick Powell
Assistant director: Gemma Fairlie
2006-08-21 14:04:52