THE ELEVENTH CAPITAL. To 10 March.
London
THE ELEVENTH CAPITAL
by Alexandra Wood
Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 10 March 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 3pm
BSL Signed 6 March
Runs 1hr No interval
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 March
New play deserves its fine production.
A new writer getting a full production in a major London theatre with a cast of 8 (more than established playwrights often expect), better have something to say and an individual way of saying it. Alexandra Wood scores on both points.
While her play is deliberately tentative in construction (we never meet the same character twice) and there are moments the experienced cast disguise some self-consciously writerly sentences (“But you’ve been kind enough to point out what I’d be missing here” one thief tells another, with unlikely drawing-room irony as they discuss relocating), Wood develops a patchwork picture of power disrupting people’s lives and loves without ever showing that authority in direct action.
Director Natalie Abarahami comes closer to doing this between scenes in her sympathetic “promenade” production (actually more a standing-room-only show) as guards with whistles mesh off a central corridor in the Theatre Upstairs with barbed- wire, giving the sense of a prison-camp to the shining new city being built out of the mud.
Wood approaches her subject from the outskirts, opening with two women neighbours talking, one tending her garden (mere weeds among the cracked, earth-bound flagstone floor). Already this scene suggests authority separating people out, bringing unhappiness also to those with power, something echoed later in the dialogue.
There’s no absolute definition of this power; it could be working through corrupted democracy or open autocracy. Wood cites Burma specifically, but it's the continuing ambiguity makes the play chilling.
Voices speak for the system alongside expressions of oppression; the opening scene shows whispered secrecy but also includes an office-cleaner’s promotion. Wood builds her picture through a series of duologues, at times ignoring the detail of real situations. Mostly though, her images build a convincingly chilling portrait. Never more than in the final scene, where a woman escapes the new city with its wall-high flag, trundling slowly over the stage on a donkey-cart.
John Hodgkinson and Emily Joyce, facing different ways, here express different opinions on the state. His received view is undermined by her experience, with its final picture of quiet desperation both sides of the power-divide.
Neighbour/Woman: Emily Joyce
Cleaner/Journalist: Rebekah Staton
Thief 1/Carpenter: Emil Marwa
Thief 2/Driver: John Hodgkinson
Civil Servant 1/Entrepreneur: Karl Collins
Civil Servant 2: Ryan Early
Girl: Charlene McKenna
Boy: David Judge
Director: Natalie Abrahami
Designer: James Cotterill
Lighting: Greg Gould
Sound: Ian Dickinson
Composer: Keith Clouston
Assistant director: David Mercatali
2007-03-04 11:29:48