March 8, 2008

• Drunk Enough…

  to say I love you?

  The stage is obscured, a great frame, studded with lights like a dressing-room mirror dominates the black wall which is where the stage should be.  It’s got a purple curtain in it.  This is New York theatre, so I am reliably informed that the play will start late.  It does.  The curtain goes up on two chaps sitting on a sofa.  The sofa is the only thing on the stage that is lit, the rest of the stage is in complete darkness.  Black as pitch. 

  The play is fantastic: disjointed sentences describing a complex allegory whereby the men’s love for each other is mirrored by the relationship between the USA and the UK.  They love each other.  They wound each other deeply. And, golly gee, do they make each other buzz.  The live-ness is astounding.  Ecstatic.  The sofa gradually moves up: so by the end of the play it is in mid-air.  Cups of coffee and cigarettes appear from precisely nowhere, and are dropped again into nowhere, a soft thud indicating that there is, indeed, a black cushion at the bottom of the stage to break their fall.  The dialogue is astounding.  Caryl Churchill uses words sparingly: if she doesn’t need a word, she does not use it. This leaves us with an impression of being part of a relationship that runs deeply.  The sort of relationship where only abstract ideas are needed. The ideas spark off other ideas.  The men speak in a type of verbal shorthand.  It’s quite astounding: I am in awe of the entire production.

  Afterwards, sitting supping some ginger ale, arguing with my knitting, and just listening to the conversation round me, I think how lucky I am.  I know some seriously cool people, and I get to see some seriously cool stuff.

  xxx

  • 11:15 pm
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