Theatreguide.London
www.theatreguide.london
The Theatreguide.London Review
Europe
Donmar
Warehouse
Theatre Summer 2019
David Greig's 1994 drama is a
generally sombre acknowledgement of the lives of some people often
overlooked by the rest of the world, its conclusion not much more than one
character's assertion that 'We are Europe too.'
Its broad scope and
dispassionate observational tone lack the sharpness a more tightly focused
outrage might have had, and Michael Longhurst's slow-moving and meandering
direction of this revival adds to the sense of general and enervating
glumness.
It's heavy going for a
summer's evening.
The play is set in a
middle-of-nowhere town somewhere on the continent, such a dying place that
the trains no longer stop there and (in a resonant image) the express goes
by too fast to read the town name on the deserted station.
Along with a handful of
residents we meet a couple of 'economic migrants' pausing to catch their
breath on a journey headed vaguely westward. And while the play doesn't
say they're all in the same boat, it recognises that they're all in boats
of some sort, none of them (to strain my metaphor) with any guarantee of
seaworthiness.
Among the locals are a couple
eager to leave and a couple who drift into the blame-it-all-on-foreigners
ultra-right. One of the travellers finds an unexpected opportunity to set
down roots while another moves on with renewed but not blind hope of
something better.
A couple of characters die
pointlessly, and the world outside notices none of it.
The challenge for a play like
this is making us care, and neither playwright Greig nor director
Longhurst is particularly successful at it, neo-Brechtian devices like
act-opening choruses and titled scenes just separating us further from the
characters.
This is in spite of some
attractive performances, particularly by Faye Marsay as the local most
desperate to leave, Natalia Tena as the migrant in whose rootlessness she
sees freedom, Ron Cook as the stationmaster disoriented by the loss of his
calling, and Kevork Malikyan as the outsider with whom he finds an
unexpected connection.
As that short list suggests, you are likely to find more to attract your interest and sympathy in the personal stories than in their geopolitical implications.
Gerald
Berkowitz
|
Receive
alerts
every time we post a new review
|