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27/8/06 © MARK FISHER published in Variety
REALISM (Royal Lyceum Theater, Edinburgh; 658 seats; £24 ($46) top)
An Edinburgh Intl. Festival and National Theater of Scotland presentation of a play in one act written and directed by Anthony Neilson.
With: Paul Blair, Louise Ludgate, Shauna Macdonald, Stuart McQuarrie, Sandy Neilson, Jan Pearson, Matthew Pidgeon.
By MARK FISHER
A one-man play for seven actors, "Realism" takes place inside the head of romantically troubled thirtysomething Stuart. It's a vision of a mundane Saturday at home after a heavy night on the town, made extraordinary by the dramatization of the man's every passing thought. On the surface, his day is an uneventful litany of eating, sleeping, defecating and watching TV. On another level it's a surreal fantasy that would keep Freudians busy for weeks.
The play is the work of Anthony Neilson, forever burdened with the label of being an "in-yer-face" writer, alongside Mark Ravenhill and the late Sarah Kane, for his 1990s output such as "Normal," "Penetrator" and "The Censor." Neilson himself prefers to describe his work as "experiential," the shock tactics merely one of a range of tools to make his audience feel and engage.
The writer-director's aim in "Realism" is to make us alive to the vivid subconscious landscape that we inhabit even on the most dreary of days. In this, the production is a companion piece to "The Wonderful World of Dissocia," Neilson's thrilling contribution to the 2004 Edinburgh Intl. Festival, which attempted to capture the "Alice in Wonderland" exhilaration experienced during a manic episode by someone mentally ill.
In "Realism," Stuart, played by the excellent Stuart McQuarrie, is mentally healthy, but Neilson shows how his unspoken thoughts are almost as free-ranging as someone with a serious disorder. He wakes with a hangover and spends the day brooding about the girlfriend he has recently rejected (Louise Ludgate) and the girlfriend he never forgot (Shauna Macdonald).
The most routine of activities, such as loading the washing machine or making toast, are accompanied by the voices of his friends (Paul Blair), the devil-on-his-shoulder (Matthew Pidgeon) and his parents (Jan Pearson and Sandy Neilson, the latter the playwright's father). This quietest of days is a non-stop barrage of noise, neuroses and nerves.
The result, performed on Miriam Buether's splendid set, a steeply sloping bank of sand washing over the domestic appliances, ranges from the comic to the obscene.
One minute Stuart is listening to a radio discussion show, the next he is holding forth to a captivated audience about his own opinions on the issues of the day. A trip to the washroom segues into a masturbatory fantasy involving ex-lovers and interrupted by a sexually inappropriate vision of his mother. A late-payment letter from the gas company inspires a hilariously vulgar song complete with dancing flapper girls and a line of "black and white minstrels," once the mainstay of British television light entertainment, now considered hopelessly racist.
It's Neilson's willingness to reveal his own darker impulses -- be it vanity, sexism, racism, lust or anger -- that makes "Realism" at once funny and unsettling. Social conditioning makes us keep quiet about our inner thoughts, but that's not to say we don't have them. If the play doesn't have the emotional weight of its predecessor, it has a similar capacity to turn reality on its head and embellish it with theatrical flair.
In a final provocative coup, Neilson flies in a realistic kitchen set and forces us to watch McQuarrie doing nothing more than eat his breakfast until finally -- and somewhat reluctantly -- the audience decides to leave.
Sets and costumes, Miriam Buether; lighting, Chahine Yavroyan; original music and sound, Nick Powell. Opened, reviewed Aug. 14, 2006. Running time: 1 HOUR, 30 MIN. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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