Howard Barker
The Forty
Lurking Truth
So, today was a big day for me - I saw my first Howard Barker play. Unfortunately, I came on the wrong night to meet the man himself (he came to the first night, yesterday), but still - I got to see one of his plays at least. I've read dozens of Barkers plays, most of his poetry and all of his theoretical works, and it was a great experience to see what was the first professional production of The Forty. The most recent of Barker's compendia, The Forty is made up of forty self-contained scenes. There is no overarching narrative, but the scenes share certain characteristics. They each focus on a moment of intense emotion, and present it either wordlessly, or through very minimal language - the wordiest of them has two sentences in it. The Forty really is an actor's play - the script requires tremendous attention to the details of speech; a single phrase might be repeated five times, each time with a completely different meaning. The cast of this production were more than up to the task, and they each gave bravura performances. Devon Baur was exactly what I thought a Barker actor would be - her every move seemed perfectly calculated, and she had a certain poise that seemed like the physical equivalent of Barker's intense, pared-down language. Sam Harris and Richard Lynch also deserve a mention - it is difficult to imagine any actor delivering those lines better.
David Ian Rabey's direction was excellent, and the lighting was something really special (it never occurred to me that one could use lights at the side of the stage like that). All in all, this was a fantastic evening, and I'm glad my first experience of Barker on stage was tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment