WELL........ To 24 January.
London.
WELL…………………..
by Lisa Kron.
Revival of the production seen at Trafalgar Studio 2 in September 2008.
Apollo Theatre To 24 January 2009.
2-3 Jan 3pm & 8pm then
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 40min No interval.
TICKETS: 0844 579 1971.
www.nimaxtheatres.com/well (booking fee by 'phone & online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 September at Trafalgar Studio 2.
Life and art really well mixed.
Cindy Oswin’s lecture-performance On the Fringe at Toynbee Studios last summer described her experience in London’s sixties Fringe, where theatre was about infusing work with the performer’s experience.
Michigan-born Lisa Kron has been doing that since 1984 in New York. This piece plays with reality in theatre. Kron draws on experience of her mother, who determinedly pursued ethnic integration in the face of hostile local authorities (their determination to downmarket anywhere Black people started living is an incredible side-issue), yet could latterly hardly rise from her chair.
In a family seemingly suffering chronic hypochondria of almost genetic determination, Lisa also covers her experiences in an allergy clinic that seems an operation of, and encouragement to, low-level lunacy. Invading the action is a childhood bully who’s in Lisa’s experience if not her ‘script’.
Disruption runs throughout, as the cue cards for Lisa’s ‘performance’ are rendered useless when mother warms to her role. At first she’s unaware she’s not at home in the room lovingly recreated on a section of the stage. Ann seems to prove Philip Larkin’s point about parents’ affect on children doesn’t need two consenting adults. Alone, she does it, before annoyingly attaching the affection of her daughter’s hired actors.
Some of this is clearly make-believe ‘reality’. But different sorts of reality shade into each other throughout. Even in Eve Leigh’s London revival. For the author originally played herself. Or played being herself. In a technically brilliant performance of alert reactions and words flooding across sentence boundaries, Natalie Casey is a daughter who’s just survived childhood, rather than looking back from comparative maturity. When she calls Sarah Miles (another admirably crafted performance) by her own name, and Miles replies by calling her Lisa, it’s clearly a pretence, in the way it wouldn’t be if Natalie was – well, Lisa.
It makes the all-too-American ending harder to take, as the response to Ann’s letter is clearly an actor’s performance, the final instruction to kill the lights the same, rather than – just possibly - the performer’s personal response. None if this stops the piece being fascinating and, early on especially, very funny.
Ann Kron: Sarah Miles.
Lisa Kron: Natalie Casey.
Ensemble: Thomas Morrison, Jason Rowe, Hannah Stokely, Zara Tempest-Walters.
Director: Eve Leigh
Designer: Helen Goddard.
Lighting: Tim Mascall.
2008-09-20 01:18:22