At Mercury Theatre |
| Mercury Theatre- The Pull of Negative Gravity , Traverse, Edinburgh , August 18, 2004 |
| Jonathan Lichenstein’s new play ‘The Pull of Negative Gravity,’ is inspired by the revelation that ‘more soldiers commit suicide during and after a conflict than are killed by enemy action during the conflict itself.’ It is not about the rights or wrongs of a conflict but about its human cost. The war is never entirely about the men who fight but also about the families, especially the women in the role of carer, who pay that price. The war never entirely ‘somewhere else.’ Lichenstein’s writer’s note in the programme speaks of how ‘the weight of things can wreak a quiet havoc.’ His play is not about fury but those rarer qualities: compassion and understanding. Hence the title with its almost whistful association with cosmic weightlessness. The location of the play in West Wales is perfectly judged. For there are two kinds of war in this tragedy. The first is the passionless war on the hillfarmers who have just managed to survive, one wreaked by a distant government whose mismanagement of the Foot and Mouth crisis triggers the whole tragedy. Before the play opens the father has committed suicide and the two sons, Dai and Rhys, tossed a coin to see who would join up to try to save the farm. The play deals with the aftermath of these two self-destructive acts for the son who goes, Dai, is sent to Iraq and returns appallingly damaged in mind and body. The farm – as you know from the very beginning – is lost. It will be bought as a holiday place. There are strong echoes of Wordsworth’s poem ‘Michael’ where a hill farm’s delicate economy is unbalanced through no fault of the farmer, a son is sent away to earn money to save it and all is lost. These roots reveal the play’s adherence to the Romantic creed of personal agency, freedom and compassion. This was a wonderful production not only in its meticulous observation of family dynamics and the small localised tragedies that result from political decisions made in distant centres of power but in its writing. Don’t be fooled by the kitchen-sink connotations of the sofa and kitchen table of Ellen Cairns’s set – they may evoke domesticity but the the boulders that lie among the furnishings allowing a shift from inside the house to the mountain outside also seem to represent a home and family falling apart as clearly as are the homes and families of far-off Iraq. The boundaries between them and us, nature and culture, the Iraqis and the Welsh are slipping before the show even starts. A big screen at the back seems just a plain backdrop until it is backlit to reveal a hospital bed with a patient. The clinical space of authority is one of death, of victims, seen here in the hidden hospital scene but figured offstage in the stories of governmental mismanagement. The insistent refrain of ‘hold me … hold me tight’ resonates through the play as both family and selves fall apart. There is no grace. It is appropriate that we see the two women first: Louise Collins is the hysterical Bethan, Dai’s fiancée, madly, crazily dancing on the mountain top as heliocopters come in to land, desperate to see him return, while Joanne Howarth is a stoic Vi, the mother who sits bitterly within stuffing envelopes with fliers for health care insurance. Their bodies tell the tales of intense pressure. Vi puts a stone in her mouth. She cannot swallow it. The writing is rich, poetic, firmly located in the patterns and rhythms of West Wales. Lichenstein was brought up in Llandrindod Wells and he has the voices just right. it was a completely Welsh cast and all four actors are superb. Daniel Hawksford is heartbreakingly eager and boyish as Rhys, the son left behind, in love of his brother’s fiancée and desperate for the love his mother gives Dai. Lee Haven-Jones is stunning as the supple Rhys of the past and the twisted inarticulate wreck that returns. I was not the only one of the packed audience weeping at the end of this show. |
Reviewed by: Jeni Williams |
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