Published in the Guardian
The Garden
Oran Mor, Glasgow
3 out of 5
I have been at the theatre when an audience member collapsed, but never have I seen two keel over at once. Such was the unfortunate, not to say unlikely, scene at Oran Mor for this lunchtime performance, bringing Zinnie Harris's two-hander to a premature end. Having consulted the script, I realise we missed only the final few lines of a domestic drama that, like many plays in these apocalyptic times, is about the impossibility of a future.
Mac, played by Sean Scanlan, works for a scientific sub-committee investigating, we presume, the climate upheaval that has sent temperatures soaring. Stuck at home, his wife, Jane (Anne Lacey), has a vision of an apple tree growing through the lino of their fifth-floor apartment, for which she tries not to blame her depressive illness.
In cheerier times, the tree might have been a metaphor for green shoots of recovery, but in this desolate place, it is a symbol of humanity's destructive power. A kitchen floor in the sweltering American heat is no place for a new garden of Eden. Jane takes the scissors to the unwelcome plant, leaving it more forlorn than the tree in Waiting for Godot, before cutting it down altogether.
This is a barren planet incapable of regeneration. Like the lost child Jane cannot speak of, the tree's death rules out the possibility of rebirth, still less redemption. A political remedy is no more likely, and even Mac admits the committee's report is an "exercise, not a solution". No wonder the couple retreat so eagerly into the inertia of alcohol and anti-depressants, a haven from the literal and metaphorical madness of their lives.
Such bleakness is dispiriting, but Harris, who also directs, writes with a crisp, elliptical style and sense of political engagement that temporarily keeps the fatalism at bay.
Ends today. Box office: 0844 477 1000. Then touring.
© Mark Fisher
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND updates: http://groups.google.com/group/theatreSCOTLANDupdates
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/theatrescotland
The Garden
Oran Mor, Glasgow
3 out of 5
I have been at the theatre when an audience member collapsed, but never have I seen two keel over at once. Such was the unfortunate, not to say unlikely, scene at Oran Mor for this lunchtime performance, bringing Zinnie Harris's two-hander to a premature end. Having consulted the script, I realise we missed only the final few lines of a domestic drama that, like many plays in these apocalyptic times, is about the impossibility of a future.
Mac, played by Sean Scanlan, works for a scientific sub-committee investigating, we presume, the climate upheaval that has sent temperatures soaring. Stuck at home, his wife, Jane (Anne Lacey), has a vision of an apple tree growing through the lino of their fifth-floor apartment, for which she tries not to blame her depressive illness.
In cheerier times, the tree might have been a metaphor for green shoots of recovery, but in this desolate place, it is a symbol of humanity's destructive power. A kitchen floor in the sweltering American heat is no place for a new garden of Eden. Jane takes the scissors to the unwelcome plant, leaving it more forlorn than the tree in Waiting for Godot, before cutting it down altogether.
This is a barren planet incapable of regeneration. Like the lost child Jane cannot speak of, the tree's death rules out the possibility of rebirth, still less redemption. A political remedy is no more likely, and even Mac admits the committee's report is an "exercise, not a solution". No wonder the couple retreat so eagerly into the inertia of alcohol and anti-depressants, a haven from the literal and metaphorical madness of their lives.
Such bleakness is dispiriting, but Harris, who also directs, writes with a crisp, elliptical style and sense of political engagement that temporarily keeps the fatalism at bay.
Ends today. Box office: 0844 477 1000. Then touring.
© Mark Fisher
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND updates: http://groups.google.com/group/theatreSCOTLANDupdates
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/theatrescotland
No comments:
Post a Comment