Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
3 stars
A shell-shocked man can get away with murder. Or so it seems in Graham Greene’s very English Second World War noir, brought to life in Daniel Jamieson’s adaptation by director Nikki Sved’s Theatre Alibi company. It’s not just the way the befuddled hero of the piece Arthur Rowe somewhat gamely chances the arm - and a few body parts besides - of his exotic German visitor Anna after losing his memory when a bomb went off in his face. It’s more the way he goes on the run from his own guilt as a blitzed London becomes a symbol of his psychological purging following the death of his wife.
It all start with a piece of cake won at a village fete. From such innocent beginnings, Arthur is thrust into a Kafkaesque labyrinth populated by spiritualist spooks, bucolic book-sellers, vanishing private eyes and swing-filled boarding houses, possibly of ill-repute. Throw in a dodgy doctor, a double agent, a couple of dead bodies and some hidden micro-film the entire plot hinges on, and asking Arthur to pull himself together would be a tad unfair to say the least.
With a cast of six playing all parts, this makes for a beguiling enough Freudian nightmare dressed up as cut-glass populist pulp. Chris Bianchi’s Arthur seems to be in some perennial existential crisis, saved only by Jordan Whyte’s sturdily unruffled Anna. There’s fun to be had too with a succession of Boy’s Own style villains. But the real mystery here is the set. Its cluttered junkyard might be visually striking, but the hump-backed catwalk at its centre is hazardously unwieldy. No wonder so many bodies end up in the drink.
The Herald, April 22nd 2010
ends
3 stars
A shell-shocked man can get away with murder. Or so it seems in Graham Greene’s very English Second World War noir, brought to life in Daniel Jamieson’s adaptation by director Nikki Sved’s Theatre Alibi company. It’s not just the way the befuddled hero of the piece Arthur Rowe somewhat gamely chances the arm - and a few body parts besides - of his exotic German visitor Anna after losing his memory when a bomb went off in his face. It’s more the way he goes on the run from his own guilt as a blitzed London becomes a symbol of his psychological purging following the death of his wife.
It all start with a piece of cake won at a village fete. From such innocent beginnings, Arthur is thrust into a Kafkaesque labyrinth populated by spiritualist spooks, bucolic book-sellers, vanishing private eyes and swing-filled boarding houses, possibly of ill-repute. Throw in a dodgy doctor, a double agent, a couple of dead bodies and some hidden micro-film the entire plot hinges on, and asking Arthur to pull himself together would be a tad unfair to say the least.
With a cast of six playing all parts, this makes for a beguiling enough Freudian nightmare dressed up as cut-glass populist pulp. Chris Bianchi’s Arthur seems to be in some perennial existential crisis, saved only by Jordan Whyte’s sturdily unruffled Anna. There’s fun to be had too with a succession of Boy’s Own style villains. But the real mystery here is the set. Its cluttered junkyard might be visually striking, but the hump-backed catwalk at its centre is hazardously unwieldy. No wonder so many bodies end up in the drink.
The Herald, April 22nd 2010
ends
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