Ah, Holiday!
Is there a better feeling? Wife and I and the children leave for France tomorrow, to spend half-term recovering from a non-stop schedule of shoots (in her case) and too many conversations of the “Is it “Intelligence” or “Wisdom”?” variety in my case.
I am also looking to recover from the draining effects of seeing “Duet for One”, which (while it boasts two of the best stage actors around in Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman, both on blisteringly good form) is a play that only gets up to 90% of capacity, and leaves the audience with the unrewarding feeling of coitus interruptus.
It’s a real museum piece: full of the newly popular joys of psychotherapy (it was written in the early 80′s, and is clearly inspired by the life and illness of Jacqueline du Pre – although in the play the heroine is a violinist and her affliction is Multiple Sclerosis) and very static – unsurprisingly since the heroine is wheelchair-bound and it takes place in an office. The oddest thing about it, however, is that the final act feels like an Epilogue, rather than a conclusion: the emotional fireworks all come in the previous act, leaving the final one feeling very,very flat – and for all the firepower of the actors involved, they can’t quite coax it into the life that it needs to satisfy the audience’s need for resolution.
Maybe it wasn’t the best piece to see straight on the back of “Madame de Sade” – although interesting to learn that “Duet for One” is another play that goes over a bomb with our Gallic friends, recently having run for a record-breaking year in Paris. It’s another “listening” play, in the Racinian tradition – although Me As A Protestant would have been happier with the audience’s behaviour at this performance, as there were no crass exclamations of “Oooh!” as swear words abounded and emotions were stripped bare, as there were at the Mishima.
Anyway, next is some Shakespeare: “The Winter’s Tale” as part of The Bridge Project, so while it’s not the most action-packed of Shakespearean dramas, it is in a very different vein – and I have to confess that I am more than ready for that.
