REVIEWED: CHARLES ON CHARLES BRIDGE

This very short play was both sweet and tender.

Indeed it seemed to me to be less of a play and more of musical composition, with four beautifully-played string instruments at the back of the stage, accompanying the performance, which consisted of two people, a couple, talking on stage. Sometimes, due to the clarity of the actors, words were mumbled and the music swept up and carried the intention of the sentence through rather than the actors themselves. I am not sure if this was intentional. However, either way, it was effective and I am glad the music was so integral to the work. Sondre Bryntesen’s composition was certainly very impressive.

The play itself was quite surreal – not really being set, it felt to me, in a certain time or place.  ‘Snippets of a relationship between two lovers who meet once a year in Prague’ – that was basic the backstory. With the minimal stage props of the atmospheric lamppost and bench the feeling of timelessness was evident (despite the mentioning of e-mail and phones which placed it in the 20^th century at least). The two main actors did well considering the music and the length of their lines however, as I mentioned, sometimes words were lost. I thought the actor who played Charles was particularly strong although I would have like to have seen a better use of the stage space by both actors. I felt this was rather limited.

However, as a romantic, I felt that, even for me, the play was rather too sentimental and unrealistic. Once a year wouldn’t be enough me, or at least the play didn’t convince me it would be, to see a lover. Attempts were made in the script to show the struggles of this relationship and the difficulty of maintaining it. However the music, and the setting, gave the play a twist of the dreamlike and so the sweetness, potentially sickly, was offset.

This overall created a play of a bizarre but delicate quality.