The Royal Court Theatre
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The play features a couple who simultaneously acknowledge and disacknowledge each other. The man and woman (named only as such in the script) each have thoughts - an internal monologue - which is intermittently voiced. The monologues of the man and woman (which are not connected in their context) intercut, displaying Thorpe's point of how so much is happening at the same time. We miss sections of each person's monologue, as their thoughts silently continue while the other person speaks, so we only hear snippets of each character's thoughts. They move around the stage - an apartment with a fully working and decked out kitchen, a working television etc. - occasionally interacting with each other as they play a video game or make a sandwich, but do not acknowledge when each other speaks. Their speech is in fact their thoughts that only the audience can hear. |
The staging of this piece does really articulate Thorpe's "attempt to get to grips with the fact that everything happens at once". I certainly felt that. During one of the sections of the man's monologue, he sat down on the couch and began to play on the television. This is where I made the fatal error of admiring a working TV on stage and watching the video game for a matter of milliseconds. After that, I never fully clocked what the man was talking about! |
The monologues themselves are performed with flair by the actors. However, I did find that it being so disjointed, and the lack of plot made it quite difficult to fully comprehend. It was challenging to find the thread that made the piece run, but that may have been what Chris Thorpe was trying to create - a fragmented, obscure piece. I wasn't entirely sure what the monologues were actually about, the only message I managed to extrapolate was that lots of things happen at the same time, and really only because that's what it said on the back of the program. |
The play makes for an interesting (and short) night out. It is vastly different from any piece of theatre that I have ever watched before, and I always welcome a piece of theatre that not only entertains but challenges me as well.
Tickets at the top of the balcony and in the slips are only £12 while lots of seats in the Circle, which offer a really good view are £16. Also, the programme is a script which I absolutely LOVE!