WITNESS. To 17 August.
London
WITNESS
by Cecilia Parkert, translated by Kevin Halliwell
Gate Theatre To 17 August 2002
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 1hr No interval
TICKETS 020 7229 0706
Review Timothy Ramsden 2 August
A devastating account of modern war-zone barbarity, in a finely-judged production.No sooner had I grouched at a theatre for offering a single hour as an evening out, than along comes Witness with the same dimensions: one performer, sixty minutes. But there's no way you'd want more. Not just because of the brutalities related by its anonymous speaker: the world it encompasses is more than enough to consider in one day.
Tamzin Griffin appears alone before us, with just a chair: the perfection of rational, civilised Scandinavia from coiffure to couture (playwright and character are both Swedish). Yet, framed by the stage front, she's in a psychological hall of dislocating mirrors.
War is no longer mere life and death. This is what happens when young men, many still teenagers, find that the orders – or lack of Order – from the top permits human nature to do its worst. It's the old, women, children who suffer. The slow, tearing, bleeding, sickening actions recorded here had better be taken from fact. It would be better for humanity if they weren't, but it would infect the script with pornographic violence.
This woman interprets for a therapist, to whom sufferers of brutalities are referred. Her job is to be impartial; she has broken the golden rule by writing to one of her boss's clients. An ugly man – no Hollywood schmaltz here.
Now she's brought to account, a bystander and witness at second hand to atrocities, brought to explain her own professional misdeed, making us witnesses both to her guilt and humanity's.
In Erica Whyman's well-judged production, Griffin admirably maintains balance and control; this is a formal situation. Open emotion is not this character's suit, and would be an actor's indulgence, emotionally exploiting the pain and degradation that we encounter.
At the 1997 world premiere, there were three performers simultaneously on separate stages at Gothenburg's City Theatre. So, in a way, the Gate is continuing its experimental staging tradition by having a single actor directly facing one bank of spectators. It may lose the dimension of experience ricocheting round an audience, but the impact may well be intensified by the inescapable concentration in the Gate's tiny auditorium.
Performed by Tamzin Griffin
Director: Erica Whyman
Designer: Soutra Gilmour
Lighting: Charles Balfour
Sound: Michael Oliva
2002-08-04 13:15:41