THE GREAT HIGHWAY. To 4 March.
London
THE GREAT HIGHWAY
by August Strindberg translated by Gregory Motton
Gate Theatre 11 Pembridge Road W11 To 4 March 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7229 0706
www.gatetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 February
A long and lonely road, and an uphill journey for audiences.
Any writer as prolific as August Strindberg should be allowed a final fling of self-exposure, as in this, his last play (1909). Its subtitle, “A drama of the road with seven stations” makes specific reference to Christ and the via crucis, but whereas Christ died for others’ sins, the playwright’s concerned only with his own guilt and burden.
You’d probably have to be Strindberg to comprehend the play’s details and the logic of its progress behind the façade of a walker in the Alps. He is a Hunter, who meets a Traveller, quarrelling millers, a Teacher and a Photographer who with his family is desperate for custom of any sort. It all builds to the Hunter’s final cry, of being the one, “Who has suffered most the pain of never being who I hoped to be.”
Wally Sutcliffe’s production makes the most of the play’s glimpses of humanity and humour, and Stephen Boxer turns in a reliable central performance. But while the staging, on platforms that fold and climb across the theatre, the audience seated along its peripheries, is in the Gate’s tradition of adventurous performance spaces, it works less well than the compact, more distant, acting area of the play’s previous production here, by David Farr.
Any moment is close-up for some audience members but distant for others; close moments can be at an awkward angle. The mix of unrealistic props (doll’s-house sized mills) and real ones (photographic equipment) gives a dream, or memory-like mental landscape, which a couple of blown-up old photos of lake and mountain scenery enhance. But they leave in doubt how much this is Strindberg (never the most judiciously balanced of artists) viewing his life with considered judgment and how much it’s a psycho-voyage, illusions and all.
Certainly the characters this Hunter (who never gathers enough for his own satisfaction) meets reflect Strindberg’s experiences. But it is telling – in this production at least – that after all the bustle across the stage, and the inventive devices, it’s the final, quiet and comparatively still figure of Chooi Beh’s Japanese man seeking suicide that makes a lasting impression.
Japanese: Chooi Beh
Hunter: Stephen Boxer
Eufrosyne/Wife A: Caroline Faber
Klara/Blind Woman: Sally Faulkner
Gotthard/Organ Grinder: Gregor Henderson-Begg
Hermit/Miller E/Schoolmaster/Photographer: Michael Kirk
Miller A/Blacksmith/Murderer: Adam Meggido
Wanderer: Laurence Penry-Jones
Girl: Laura Sanchez
Director: Wally Sutcliffe
Designer: Jon Bausor
Lighting: Wolfgang Goebbel
Sound: Adriene Quartly
Assistant director: Anna Ostergren
Assistant designer: Anna Jones
2006-02-25 01:05:27