THE CARD INDEX bac to 28 March.

London

THE CARD INDEX
by Tadeusz Rozewicz, translated by Adam Czerniawski, additional translation by Barbara Plebanek and Tony Howard

Brit-Pol Theatre Company at bac studio 1 To 28 March 2002
Tues-Sat 7.30 Sun 5.30
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS 020 7223 2223
Review Timothy Ramsden 17 March 2002

Dreaming the night away becomes a lifelong nightmare in Rozewicz's fantasy biography of a faceless bureaucrat.In Polish, the title also means 'Personal File' and in the computer age (the play dates from 1960) it would be one that's been a serial victim of hacking. Central to Steve Wilson's aptly cosy, shabby set is a big bed. But our ironically named Hero has no privacy. A cupboard door slides open to let in the dead, while the door seems open to all.

Choice is denied this Hero; the play harks back to the Absurd and before that Expressionism in its flow of characters, real or fantasy, from the past who occur, and sometimes recur, making the Hero justify himself. Even the most innocent, a young German woman who takes the bedroom for a café and requires a cream bun, leads back to the grim days of Nazi occupation.

Peter Pacey's Hero becomes the all-purpose bureaucrat with a past he doesn't care to remember. Pacey's features take on a naivety that's perfect for the character. And Ria Knowles' severely-bespectacled secretary, waking up beside him in bed, has a matter-of-factness that balances the ever-changing events with an inscrutable normality.

Weirdest of all is a trio of ghostly, dust-clad Elders who enter to a discordant tritonal chant, followed at intervals by wild alliterative nonsense riffs. One of these emerges as the partisan our Hero shot, possibly by accident. No wonder looking back's not in favour: 'I've no time for memories. Come back on Wednesday,' he tells one visitor.

But memories have time for him and Peter Czajkowski's production catches the routine of dream imagery, the normality of nightmare. Only, this nightmare is the life our Hero has made himself, leading to eventual minor-key resolution as he kneels, surrounded by the memory cast, all composed on the great bed of his life.

Out of its period and political context the play doesn't have the instant force of a classic. But it naggingly provokes a sense of how night and dreams open unwelcome doors and create their own, unavoidable theatre, one where – as the Hero keeps complaining – you have to go on talking because this is the theatre.

The Hero: Peter Pacey
Mother/Olga/Fat Woman/Journalist: Susanna Page
Father/Fat Man/Miner: Martin Bendel
Elder/Peasant: Peter Luke Kenny
Elder/Man with Hat: Julius Barnett
Elder/Man with Cap: Richard Sandells:
Secretary/Voice in Bed: Ria Knowles
Bobby/Waiter/Youth/Reporter: Lawrence McGrandles Junr.
Waitress/Lively Lady/German Girl: Fiona Carew
Uncle/Teacher: Eugene Williams

Director: Peter Czajkowski
Associate Director: Tina Jones
Designer: Steve Wilson
Lighting: Mark Doubleday
Music: Warren Wills

2002-03-18 05:33:35