STONING MARY. To 23 April.

London

STONING MARY
by Debbie Tucker Green

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Downstairs) To 23 April 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat at 3.30pm
Runs 1hr No interval

TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 April

A brief blast that gains in power as it proceeds.2 hours into a show, nearly 40 years ago, an actor started screaming. Her first words, I recall, were I want it to happen. There followed a long tirade about the Vietnam War, imagining the violence affecting US which, referring also to the USA, was the title of Peter Brook's RSC production at the Aldwych Theatre.

Debbie Tucker Green offers a brief, similar global transplant. Some years ago Sarah Kane Blasted into the Royal Court's Upstairs space with an Anglicised Balkan conflict. Here, Downstairs at the Court, it's only partly war. Three apparently disparate stories take the stage, each literally illuminated by a sweeping title projection. A husband and wife argue over an AIDS prescription. There's only medicine (or money) to treat one of them. Behind them, other parents argue over their son, gone to be a child soldier.

Recriminations are the only thing holding these severed couples together. There's a major dislocation too; every external sign suggests these are English scenes. But all the issues point towards Africa the AIDS epidemic, child soldiers and the stoning to death of women.

For sitting patiently in front of the warring couples is Mary, whose story is last to be developed. It brings a violent link between the previously separate character groups. And a calm to set against the rapid conflict stuttering from others' mouths (in the AIDS story amplified by shadow-characters expressing thoughts and feelings of the married pair, extra characters who fade away as decision-making moves beyond them).

Marianne Elliott's production is played on a neutral, gravely floor (sinister given the play's title) built out over the theatre's stalls; foreign territory invading audiences' home space. It's a short, sharp shot of troubles dished up with the appearance of old-style Royal Court Anglo-urban grit, but ending as a different kind of national self-examination. A real original, it takes time to gather force but when Mary's still voice of fatalism speaks out, a (very English) policeman cuts her hair prior to execution, and the gentle rain dropping from Heaven reveals who's to cast the first stone, an utterly theatrical eloquence is evident.

Cast and full production credits not available

2005-04-08 14:50:23