Extra!_Extra!_P_Charrington_Theatre_Review_The_Dicephalus_Project_Greenwich_Playhouse

“It’s complicated”, exclaims Sarah, the obtrusive retail assistant, as an excuse for her current situation, but summing up the feeling of the play. Inspired by La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler, The Dicephalus Project shows the journey of characters interacting with one another throughout the course of a single day. The characters engage in various dialogues in which their own prejudices are apparent, then like in La Ronde one character from each scene moves to the next, meeting a new character who then moves on to the next making a chain of interconnected lives.

The Dicephalus Project is the new play from Open Stage, a collaboration of writers from the Open Book course. Open Book is a creative writing course at Goldsmith’s college, working with ex-offenders, ex-addicts and those with mental health problems to achieve their intellectual potential. The cast, writers and production staff of Open Stage are all members, so they invest a great deal of energy into the work. What was discovered at the question and answer session after the play was that the writers did not get to perform the parts of the script they had written, making this a collaborative project in every sense.

The stage management from Mel Larkin and design as a whole from Director Michael Mahony and Producer Janice Larkin was very professional and involved slick scene changes. George Maddocks’ lighting design was particularly effective, often trapping characters in intimate boxes of light, forced to face one another, or illustrating their isolation and distance from one another.

However, there are flaws in The Dicephalus Project. At first the play seems to force the dialogue, creating concern that any morals will be underlined heavily, but thankfully this is quickly overcome by the well written script and good delivery from all the cast. The play remains solidly in the reality of each scene, bordering cliché but never succumbing to it.

“It’s complicated” seems to be a mantra for the play as a whole, but rather than the play illustrating that complexity, the message seems to be one of understanding, or rather a lack of it. ‘It’s complicated’ appears in many forms as a dismissal of the other party, a way of giving up on the other party being able to understand or locking the gates to empathy. The publicity speaks of ‘delving into the fascinating minutiae of people’s everyday lives’ but The Dicephalus Project seems to avoid illustrating the interweaving of such lives in favour of the second message and this feels like a missed opportunity.

Like conjoined twins with two heads (a Dicephalus) with self loathing, the play shows how we are all of the same body of humankind, but because our minds are separate and concerned with our own thoughts we fail to listen and empathise with our fellows. This is clearly an important point for the members of Open Stage and the head that shouts it does so expertly, although it drowns out the voice of the other head and thus other meanings.

Tickets: £6, £4  (concs)

GREENWICH PLAYHOUSE

Greenwich Station Forecourt, 189 Greenwich High Road, LONDON SE10 8JA

www.galleontheatre.co.uk

Box Office: 0208 858 9256; boxoffice@galleontheatre.co.uk