Within The Glass
Someone once said that good theatre was
just four people in a room being rude to each other. Or something like that.
And there is usually food, or drink, or both, involved – copiously. Anna
Chatterton’s new play, Within The Glass, has all the ingredients for this
particular recipe, and to extend the food metaphor, too many narrative cooks
have had a hand in the broth and turned it into an engaging stew. The domestic
setting, set in a beautifully decorated upper middle class home, begins with
Tzatziki and ends with Coq au Vin – capons to be exact. And the castrated
capons take on rarified symbolic properties as the compromised origins of an
unborn fetus become the crux of what all four people are being so rude to each
other about from the get go.
Philippa Domville is flawless as the cool,
perfect study in beige fragility as she delivers every line with a careful
reserve that barely conceals her immense need to bear children. Rick Roberts as
her husband matches her cool façade with a touch of endearing bravado that
builds to a harrowing climax by the end of the evening. Paul Braunstein and
Nicola Correia-Damude, as the visiting couple, play a kind of verbal table
tennis with their quirkily crafted status as straight male poet and vegetarian
visual artist, respectively. Braunstein gives a powerful performance as he
plays with a form of bewildered masculinity that never quite gets his partner’s
desire to carry someone else’s child to full term, while Correia-Damude has
fine moments yet falters frequently as her character never fully represents the
power of the kind of maternal gravitas that the script grapples with. And yet
this could be partially due to writing that gives her character the bulk of
stereotypical lines regarding an earth mother/vegan goddess persona that becomes somewhat heavy handed by the end of the play. One placenta
line, although somewhat hilarious, is a bit hard to swallow given all the
clichéd character points that have come before. And yet the cast rises to the
occasion in breakneck solidarity as Andrea Donaldson’s direction gives the
overall piece a frequently slapstick tone that is distracting at times but
necessary to the frenetic action that informs and spirals out of the dialogue.
Coming in at ninety minutes, the play may
have been served better had it been ten minutes longer with an intermission.
This could have spaced out the appetizers, cooled the clichés, and made room
for a less predictable dessert/denouement. The plethora of narrative
ingredients that might have been trimmed may be what Chatterton is getting at
as she takes a hefty bite out of an over fed family myth and the complex rights
of parents that can depend as much on geographic location as they can upon
personal need and familial fulfillment. Within The Glass, above all else, does
reveal the impressive amount of research the writer has done in order to fill
her script with fascinating detail about those iconic nine months and all they
can lead to.
There are powerful speeches for both of the
female characters that tend to dichotomize, and also illuminate, timeworn
arguments regarding some women’s need to reproduce. And these speeches put
the men in their ‘proper’ place as the seemingly laid back sperm bearing
objects of frequent disaffection. They make their own male-oriented pleas to be
considered during the machinations of a complex mix-up that begins the play - ultimately becoming as ‘hystericized’ as the women once it becomes clear that
no one may get what they want at the end of the day.
What Within The Glass does beautifully is
expose the madcap, at times terrifyingly heteronormative need – becoming
maddeningly homonormative in the haze of late capitalist queering during the early
decades of the 21st century – to replay over and over and over again the
relentless tragicomic pursuit of a family a home and a big fat income. Wouldn’t
that be lovely.
Chatterton’s script, like a fabulous dinner
party gone wrong, is extremely tasty, at times hilarious and thought provoking,
but bears too many dishes, too many decisions on the part of a key character,
some of which occur much too early in the ninety minute conversational quartet, leading the last forty minutes into a somewhat predictable and anti climatic climax.
And yet it is the climax that is perhaps the most satisfying and the most
reminiscent of historic dinner party/cocktail cacophony scripts. Like George
and Martha at the end of Albee’s classic ‘four people in a room being rude’
scenario, Domville and Roberts, in quiet almost animalistic desperation, hint
at what Chattertton’s script might have been had the narrative plot driven
decisions been trimmed and served up in one or two installments, at gradual
intervals, rather than a profound moment of reversal being laid out too early.
As it stands, Within The Glass bears elements of a wonderful recipe for a
form of dramatic comedy – the almighty dramedy – but hasn’t quite reached the
preferred amount of finely tempered simmering points throughout.
WITHIN THE GLASS RUNS AT TARRAGON THEATRE
UNTIL FEBRUARY 14TH
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