THE END OF REALITY. To 18 November.
London
THE END OF REALITY
by Richard Maxwell
Barbican Pit To 18 November 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm
BSL Signed 16 Nov
Runs 1hr 25min No interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Sam Hall 9 November 2006
New York City Players’ ultra-stylised meditation on violence raises more questions than it answers.
The new play from award-winning playwright/director Richard Maxwell is a musing on religion, the ‘throw-away-ness’ of violence and the emptiness at the core of the American psyche. Maybe that's the problem; the British and American psyches are very different things. The British and American theatre-going publics are also very different things.
In America, Maxwell and his company, the New York City Players, are lauded and win awards for their stylised, pared-down, B-movie acting style. In the UK, where audiences are looking to find empathy, this style imitates am-dram and alienates the audience further than the playwright intended, distorting the message. They found it a challenging play and didn’t appear to be enjoying themselves - the majority fidgeting, some waiting for an opportunity to leave early, almost all hysterical at the stylised violence.
The End of Reality explores its themes through hyper-stylised physical exchanges and, at times, over-long philosophical and religious musings. Set in a glaring, sterile, white security station in a mysterious office in a rough area, with a large screen displaying real-time security footage from the outside world, its characters are isolated from reality.
The team of guards fill the silences with small talk. Until that is, a mysterious assailant enters, and in the first of several stylised, slow-motion fights, kidnaps (and possibly kills) one of their colleagues.
Cracks begin to show, everyone gets names wrong – they don’t recognise the assailant or the guard who was kidnapped. If people don’t matter, what does? For the main part, the characters are remote from one another, apart from several impassioned monologues from Marcia/Marsha, the new security guard.
Her musings expose an emptiness and the ache for something, be it family, religion or community, that Maxwell contends is at the underbelly of modern American life. A premise that needs exploring, but coupled with the 'non-acting', staccato dialogue, and uneasy silences, exposes the diatribe-like aspects of the play.
Maxwell has been quoted as saying that for him his work is ‘about asking questions rather than providing answers,’ and with this ‘difficult’ but not entirely unrewarding piece, he’s achieved this.
Cast:
Thomas Bradshaw
Makeda Christodoulos
Alex Delinois
Jim Fletcher
Sibyl Kempson
Brian Mendes
Director/Writer: Richard Maxwell
Designer/Lighting: Eric Dyer
Fight trainer: Brain Mendes
Choreography: The company
2006-11-13 08:19:48