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20 South Street presents the UK premiere of
Desire/Desig
by Joseph Maria Benet i Jornet
Translated by Sharon G. Feldman
Director - Julia Stubbs
Designer – Mike Lees
Lighting Designer – Rei Kurosaki
Sound Designer – Damian Reynolds
White Bear Theatre
13 - 31 July 2010
A review by James Buxton for EXTRA! EXTRA! Desire won the Catalan Literature National Prize when it was first performed in Barcelona in 1991 and Jornet, the author of more than 40 works for the stage, has a prestigious reputation as one of the leading pioneers of Catalan Theatre in the post-Franco era. Jornet was recently awarded The Max Award of Honour, a life time achievement award for his contribution to Spanish theatre. Desire is a cryptic play about a woman named 'She' (Annabel Cleare) who goes out to buy cigarettes for her husband (Simon de Deney). However she finds herself in the company of 'The Man' (Stephen Connery-Brown) whose car has broken down, the strange thing being that she has seen this man twice before in the same location and in an identical situation. She agrees to help him but is suspicious of this coincidence. 'The Woman' (Isabelle Gregson) appears, who knows The Man and gives a monologue about her first love, while 'She' joins The Man in a café. But when the man excuses himself to make a phone call for repairs, The Woman takes a seat opposite 'She' and bares all the details as how she has only ever had one love despite numerous relationships. When she returns home, she finds herself in a strange flux, frustrated, but fiercely in love with her husband, she leaves the house and coincidentally meets The Man again. This time the roles are reversed, and it is her whose car is broken down, and The Man agrees to help her. However when She comes face to face with The Woman, she attacks her with her husband’s chisel in an act of rage, only to return home to set out to buy cigarettes again. Jornet's play is a strange piece of theatre that seems to be reaching for Borgesian levels of unexplained coincidences with a cast of mysterious characters. These characters seem to represent different extremes rather than fully fledged individuals in themselves. There is a sense that the actors are in a heightened world where the odd and menacing are never explicitly stated, but lie dormant as a constant threat, for the audience's interest is sparked by the mysterious Man and She's attempt to get to the bottom of their recurring encounter. One is never sure of what his agenda is - he goes beyond the rational explanation of a stalker, and becomes a figure that almost represents her own anxiety for mystery and desire. She, played by Annable Cleare, has a difficult role as a woman who is purposefully awkward. Cleare Bohemianly dressed in blue shirt and purple headband, appears constantly suspicious, doubting her husband's innocuous comments and questioning the portentous, repeated appearance of The Man. She thrives on enigma and almost seems to go out of her way to make her life more difficult, although it appears that she is caught up in a series of events that have no logic other than unavoidable coincidence. Cleare's face mirrors this confusion as events become more complicated and inscrutable. At times her acting felt a little stilted especially in scenes with The Husband, where their romance and physicality felt unconvincing. However, Cleare exudes a sense of frustration and suppressed confusion well, as she is unable to solve the significance of the Man, but there is a sense that she was holding back from allowing her character to fully come to life, as if she was not totally comfortable in her character's skin. Whether this is Stubb's intention, it felt, at times, quite awkward, perhaps straining too hard for a deeper purpose. Simon de Deney as The Husband begins his performance in a naturalistic manner, sanding down a piece of wood. As the play progresses however, de Deney becomes more wooden in his movement and actions as his wife becomes more distant, despite at the same time, paradoxically claiming she loves him more than their children. De Deney's actions did at times, feel quite contrived and the still unnatural way his arms hung by his sides, felt a little too theatrically aware, which intensified the awkwardness of their scenes. Stephen Connery-Brown gives an enigmatic performance as The Man. In a beige trench-coat, his hair wet, his eyes stare earnestly at 'She', invoking sympathy as he asks for her help in his soft, hesitant manner. Connery-Brown's voice is particularly unique and carries a trembling quality. Connery-Brown behaves as The Man with unnerving, feeble charm, so one is never sure of his intent. The fact that we are never sure of his intent, which seems to go beyond a question of good or evil, adds an imaginative dimension that the audience fills in for themselves. In conversation with Cleare, his cryptic replies are nicely balanced by his insistence on transparency, while Cleare maintains her suspicion of him despite his, unassuming, febrile behaviour. Isabelle Gregson as The Woman in a grey blouse and skirt is startlingly direct. She delivers her monologue upstage bathed in red light to the audience as the instrumental of “Girl from Ipanema” plays in the background. Looking the audience dead in the eye at times, she wears her heart on her sleeve as she blithely lays bare her past loves. Gregson holds her own and expounds on how she never got over her first love, venturing to describe exactly the room in which they made love. She is a mysterious character and acts with unswerving confidence and disarming directness. Lees design for the set in the black box theatre is roughly a road, with three white dashes running, slanted along the middle. Piles of charcoal sit in the corners, creating a peculiarly desolate effect, while a few black leaves are stuck to the floor. A textured board hangs along the wall at the back with pink and blue lights illuminating it at the beginning. A table and two chairs sit upstage. The overall effect is a disconcerting fusion between the isolation of the empty road and the play's self searching theme. Gregson's openness appropriately conforms to this barren roadside, and it also echoes the stark sense of Cleare being inwardly lost. The lighting is largely white, but cold blues and harsh reds are employed to disturbing effect. When Gregson gives her monologue, a red filter adds a sultry, provocative atmosphere to her meditation on desire. Throughout the play, the clip and rustle of the needle on a record can be heard. This is employed by Reynolds to create an unsettling environment which corresponds to the central themes of repetition and circularity, whilst providing an eerie ambience to the desolate location on the side of the road. Stubbs's production of Desire manages to effectively capture a mysterious sense of confusion as Cleare frustratingly searches to unravel her own desire. However, Cleare's performance is hampered by her own confusion with the character, whom she seems to be struggling to come to terms with. Gregson and Connery-Brown fit the enigmatic couple with just the right balance of apparent innocence and cryptic statements. When Cleare argues with de Deney, we get an insight into Cleare's frustration, of not being heard by her husband, and the frequent problem of crossed wires. Jornet draws our attention to how difficult it is to communicate what you actually mean. At one point Cleare says “the phone is like a weapon” which identifies her own paranoia and the potential sense of intrusion any voice has which could disturb you in your home. A sense of deja vu imbues the play and by the end the fitting circularity of events really gives you the feeling that her life is on a loop. Jornet's Desire is purposefully opaque, leading you without giving you any answers; it attempts to get at something essential to desire that doesn't go into language. As a result is intriguing but at times, frustrating to watch.
White Bear Theatre £13/£10 http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user?region=gb_london&query=schedule&venue=whitebeartheat
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