SYMPATHETIC MAGIC by Lanford Wilson. Finborough Theatre to 17 November.
London
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
by Lanford Wilson
Finborough Theatre To 17 November 2001
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS 020 7373 3842
Review Timothy Ramsden 31 October
Steam Industry season off to a sizzling start with Lanford Wilson's playful whirl of ideas. It starts and ends as a lecture, but what happens between undermines any sense of life as logical. For a start there's reference to scriptwriters' favourite science idea, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that, at sub-atomic level, matter doesn't behave logically.
But Andy Anderson, with fellow-astrophysicist Micky Picco, is busy at the other end of the scale. William Blake spoke of seeing a world in a grain of sand; Anderson points out that, size-wise, our whole galaxy compares to the universe as one grain of sand to a lecture theatre. No wonder we grow dizzy.
This play, by accomplished American playwright Lanford Wilson, is tailor-made for the Finborough's resident company, The Steam Industry, to open its Faith and Science season. The characters are linked in a web of relationships: as relatives, partners, friends or colleagues. Behind the screen of professional titles lies the chaos of human emotions, as unstable as the atom particles of which people are constituted. We aim to act logically to persuade ourselves we are logical.
But we're not - and we don't end up behaving as if we were. You always hurt the one you love, though not usually as viciously as Andy when he lashes out at his partner Barbara after she has had an abortion.
And, this being San Francisco, the spectre of AIDS haunts more than one character. Yet it provides the strongest optimistic note; Pauli's choir of people with AIDS produces the glorious sound of Mozart's Requiem, deathbed music that lives through the ages. And Micky, head so lost in galactic discovery that he's entirely unearthly, finds a new star enters his life in the lawyer Sue.
Though the limited space means too much standing or sitting around, damping some sections in William Galinsky's production, he has the play's measure. Performances are at the very least competent and often much more than that. This is Fringe Theatre that ought to be central to any serious theatregoer's attention.
Ian 'Andy' Anderson Oliver Senton
Barbara de Biers Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Father Don Walker Toby Gaffney
Dr Carl Conklin White Philip Anthony/ Colin Pinney
Sue Olmstead Vanessa Mildenburg
Pauly Scott Daniel Goode
Dr Elizabeth Barnard Jackie Everett
Micky Picco Qarie Marshall
Director William Galinsky
Designer Katya Handt
Costumes Alice Wolfbauer
Lighting Steve Barnett
2001-11-01 00:45:55