by Time has passed but small events have a frightening vitality. The combination of lethargy and stabbing intensity that characterizes the lock down closest to us is probably the luck that has come to experience the way we have chronic illness. The American playwright Annie Baker is not the first to suggest that pain is another country, something you can be “in”: for a while, it is justified to invoke Virginia Woolf in a theater program. Baker, however, was certainly the first to demonstrate the all-encompassing nature of illness with such dramatic effect.
Uncertain Life set in a clinic where normal life is reversed, as if in negative print. In front of a small decorative wall, five women stretch out on loungers, sipping drinks through bent straws. They are not enjoying cocktails while sunbathing: they are fasting; some are imbbing chemicals. One guy turns up but, hey, it’s a subsidiary, actually it was more. Oh, and the youngest of these women is 47. Their age, which makes them extraordinary stage stars, and their artificial singing bring to mind Caryl Churchill Single Escape, which Baker’s play director James Macdonald staged with the same skewed brilliance. There is another echo: everyday observations and light manners jump into the wild and the small strange. One woman shows her coloring book; the man has a picture of the dronescopy on his phone and another woman wants him to send it to her. Physical anguish during sex is horribly described. And talk thyroid camp for cats.
Pinter is up there with Shakespeare as a shrewd, inventive curmudgeon
Here, as in earlier plays The Flick and John – both produced by the National – Baker is detailed and powerful. She takes things slowly, moving from moment to moment. This corresponds to the care taken by the sick: they walk as if no resistance is seen. The development becomes gradual, with the dialogue punctuated by significant silences, more and more absorbed, which creates when things drag into the theater not because the pace is slow but because an imaginative torpor has been planted in.
One patient, played by Christina Kirk, announces the passage of time – “19 minutes” or “21 hours” – with casual disdain. She, like all the members of the team, shows an extraordinary transparency that must be documentary. She is sprawled out reading Daniel Deronda. I have never seen one express so clearly the funny little twinkle in a reader’s eye when he is interrupted, or heard such a good account of that book – boring when you are away from it, but still fascinating when you are. there. Turns out to be a description of Uncertain Life own. A critic cannot capture it: you have to be there.
In a strange mirror image of Baker’s cast, The Homecoming It places five men around the polarizing force of one woman. Butchers, boxers and the whisper of stocking feet: Harold Pinter’s 1965 play is a graphic study of sexual excitement and power maneuvers. Its plot shifts back violently, with inevitable gear changes: a man returns to his male family with his young wife; she takes his brother to bed in front of them all; the men started openly pimping her. His language is snarling – Pinter is up there with Shakespeare as an emphatic, inventive cursor – but also balletically ornate. The motives of his characters, motivated by long-buried secrets, are unclear. It’s hard to know who will come out on top.
Stealth and a powerful sense of motor undercurrent are the drama. They don’t power Matthew Dunster’s production. Although jazz slams down noisily between scenes to convey excitement, and sudden lighting changes emerge and freeze crucial moments, the atmosphere is subdued. Specially soaked in ozone on press night, Moi Tran’s design is too sticky and too big for Hugger-mugger seediness. Performances mostly show rather than insinuate.
As the bullying patriarch, Jared Harris waves his walking stick, semaphores with his hands and roars. Lisa Diveney, like a doll in a dress split to the knee, is more white than enigmatic. Robert Emms makes her husband a crack; the play is more convincing with a hint of complexity. However, there is subtlety from Nicolas Tennant, and genuine amoral Pinterish energy from Joe Cole. He has the best speeches, including a nifty dissection of Christianity. He delivers them in a voice so cutting that he seems unmoved and with a self-delight that inspires him to dance around the stage.
Stephen Sondheim rarely revives Pacific Overtures, first seen on Broadway in 1976, is interesting: irradiated by the brilliance of its composer-lyricist – and its base. The story traces Japan’s opening up to the west, forced by United States gunboats in 1853; it is told from the Japanese point of view. The script is by John Weidman.
In a joint production between the Menier and the Umeda Arts Theatre, Osaka, Matthew White directs a small-scale but impressive production. Paul Farnsworth’s costumes and Ayako Maeda’s costumes are by turns dazzling, intense and frisky: a simple, beak-like wooden urgency; the shogun in spiky gold; slide screens; boats sitting on hats; Parasol dim, scarlet-flecked.
The trouble is an exquisite one. Some of Sondheim’s numbers capture the idea of merging traditions – and imperialism – so perfectly that there is little need for the surrounding dialogue and chronological setting. A set of rapid-fire musical parodies includes a fast-tongued parody of Gilbert and Sullivan and a can-can (quickly choreographed by Ashley Nottingham) that makes Offenbach look like a minor composer. The entire history of influence is invoked in A Bowler Hat. A duet between a samurai and his western friend beautifully blends American and Japanese landscapes, rhythms and attitudes. With rain chimes, the two men alternate lines of haiku: the water suggests the moon, glistening birch trees and the silk worn by his wife; for the other it evoked memories of the streets of languid Boston. Perfectly condensed. As created in Old friendsstill at home, Sondheim can fit an entire scene into a song.
Star ratings (out of five)
Uncertain Life ★★★★★
The Homecoming ★★
Pacific Overtures ★★★
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Uncertain Life at the Dorfman, National Theatre, London, until 13 January 2024
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The Homecoming at the Young Vic, London, until 27 January 2024
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Pacific Overtures at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 24 February 2024
