Six Characters In Search of an Author

Howard Theatre, 4th-5th March, 7.30pm, £5-6

Directed by Abigail Walker and Tara Mansell

[rating:1/5]

“Why are those people laughing?” I asked.

“Pity?” my friend replied.

We were 15 minutes into the play, and somehow the pairing of gay slapstick comedy with face painted, ghost-like characters wasn’t doing anything for us. In fairness, pulling off a ’20s Italian satirical tragi-comedy probably isn’t easy. But, this particular attempt was truly awful.

I study philosophy. I like metaphysics. I like meta-ethics. I like meta-most-things. Unfortunately, I didn’t like this. For those of you who aren’t well-acquainted with Luigi Pirandello’s work, Six Characters in Search of an Author is yet another play about putting on a play.

The plot revolves around a group of characters looking for a playwright, and a director who agrees to stage their story. In this version, the more serious parts were broken up by an overtly camp stage-hand-cum-butler, who was so gay that he would have made Louie Spence look positively brooding. This was the first of many strange directorial decisions.

It’s always refreshing to see theatre branching out. And this was certainly different. It could have been interesting. Unfortunately, bizarre direction ensured that this play was at best weird and at worst really boring.

Placing Director in the first row of the audience for the majority of the night meant that the rest of us couldn’t really see or hear him properly. Painting everyone’s faces with garish black and white patterns meant that we couldn’t see their facial expressions at all.

For reasons unknown, all the characters were on-stage at all times; so Leading Man and Leading Lady spent the majority of their time napping/doing that awkward acting-but-not-really-acting-in-silence thing. The decision to mark the shift from second to third act by lowering a projector board displaying the VLC media player logo in silence was just painful.

But, it wasn’t just direction and staging that let this play down. Some of the acting was truly abysmal. Mark Wartenberg, as Director, relied on heavy gesticulation, wearing a beret, and sighing a lot to portray his flamboyance and frustration at his cast. This was terribly unconvincing. Most was so wooden that, at times, it felt like an under-rehearsed school harvest festival.

James Parkinson delivered the only solid performance of the night. His longer monologues lacked pace, but he had a strong stage presence, and managed not to look bored; something his fellow actors would have benefited from trying.

The rest of the cast managed to mumble and sigh their way through this play, whilst tripping up over lines, stifling yawns, and missing the large majority of their cues.

It’s a shame that such poor execution squandered any potential the play had. A largely apathetic cast accompanied by two dolls (who mysteriously disappeared after the interval) was not able to save this play from its truly dreadful direction. And, for the record, those audience members were laughing at a funny text message.