I was
looking forward to seeing this new play by Wallace
Shawn but ended up being mightily disappointed. The start is promising enough with theatre
playwright turned TV script writer, Robert (Josh Hamilton), delivering a wry and witty monologue on his career
and setting the scene for what is about to enfold. The problem is with the enfolding. It leaves the audience at a loss as to what Wallace Shawn is actually getting
at. Realistic it ‘aint, but it isn’t
obviously fantasy either. It falls
somewhere between the two, but told in such a monotonous way that any discourse
afterwards as to what Shawn actually does mean is deemed futile.
The Talk
House of the title is a club where Robert and several of his old theatrical
work colleagues have arranged to meet for a reunion ten years after they were
all involved in one of his plays. This genteel,
old-fashioned dining club, slightly faded at the edges and somewhat drab and
sinister is very well realised by the The
Quay Brothers. Nellie (Anna Calder-Marshall), the original
hostess has faded along with her workplace and when we come across Dick, an
ageing actor, hiding away in a corner, the “something nasty in the woodshed”
atmosphere heightens. He is sporting various facial bruises, the
result of a vicious assault by his friends, but it is never explained why he
has become a target. As everyone else
assembles and begins to open up as to what they’ve been doing in the interim
years, it becomes clear that the world we’ve entered is a very odd one
indeed. But is it a parody of what we’re
enduring now thanks to global terrorism, is it set sometime in the future, is
it a criticism of American/our government policy or just a chance to spout
forth on the eventual demise of the acting profession? I really have no idea and, such is the
tiresome way in which the cast are made to spill the beans about how they now
make a living (carrying out targeted killings on those who mean the country
harm) I really don’t care.
Wallace Shawn, himself, is one of the cast, as the poor,
unfortunate Dick, who, it turns out was a pretty awful actor in Robert’s play
ten years ago. Maybe that’s why he was
beaten up? Anything is possible and
nothing is clear at The Talk House and even the abrupt ending leaves everyone
confused as to whether or not the strange conversations by the even stranger
conversationalists is over or not.
The
Director, Ian Rickson does his best,
but even he can’t disguise the mannered, one dimensional quality of these odd
people with the even odder raison d’etre.
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