“Johnson embodies Marilyn’s vivacity, fragility and bravery in a way that is delightful and ultimately heartbreaking”
This production of Terry Johnson’s play is beautifully suited to the intimacy of the Arcola. The action takes place in a hotel room during the course of one night. The four characters are unnamed, they are the Professor, the Actress, the Ball Player and the Senator but we know who they are, as they are iconic; Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joe McCarthy. I wish the conversations between Einstein and Monroe had really taken place but, although they almost certainly did not, can we be sure of that?
The plausibility of the events and their unlikelihood combine in a delicious uncertainty that is mirrored in conversations about relativity, Heisenberg and Schrödinger’s cat. If this all sounds a bit heavy please don’t be put off, this is a very funny play. If you can imagine Marilyn Monroe explaining relativity to Einstein, using a toy car, some torches and two toy trains, you can see the wonderful absurd genius of Johnson’s work. Both Monroe, played by Alice Bailey Johnson and and Simon Rouse’s Einstein are magnificent. Johnson embodies Marilyn’s vivacity, fragility and bravery in a way that is delightful and ultimately heartbreaking. Rouse’s Einstein is like a much loved and very clever uncle, who takes the extraordinary night in his stride. The relationship that develops between the two is touching and believable. The real Marilyn was widely read, and certainly not a dumb blond. Her notebooks include musings about many topics, including the renaissance and recipes for stuffing mix. Marilyn was an invention and here we see glimpses of what the real woman may have been like. I would love her to have chatted to Einstein but, despite rumours that they had an affair, they probably did not even meet.
Marilyn is not the first visitor to Einstein’s Manhattan hotel room that night. That is Senator McCarthy, played with menace and increasing vitriol by Tom Mannion. He wants to ensure Einstein’s attendance at the Un-American Affairs Committee in the morning, but Einstein is not to be bullied. The next visitor is Marilyn, coming straight from filming the famous skirt over the hot air vent scene from ‘The Seven Year Itch.’ And then her husband, Joe DiMaggio, arrives. He is full of jealousy and suspicion, furious about the scene Marilyn has just filmed, which was watched by thousands of men. He has no idea how to handle his clever, damaged wife. Oliver Hembrough’s gum chewing DiMaggio gets affirmation from finding his picture on baseball cards, and blusters and postures in a way that is both infuriating yet somehow touching in his inability to understand.
This is a play about fame and politics, about surviving and making choices. There is sadness and doubt in everyone but especially McCarthy, who grows more brutish as the night wears on. Marilyn says that she has ‘more than I dreamed of and nothing I want,’ her fragility is haunting. Einstein is shadowed with guilt because of the contribution his work made to the development of the atom bomb. DiMaggio truly loves his wife but has no idea how to keep her. There is no neat resolution here, but the themes of the play have relevance to current political concerns in the States and the treatment of women in Hollywood today. This is a timely revival of Johnson’s play and well worth seeing.
“The ease and skill with which Alex Austin characterises and physicalises his roles is a truly stunning “
Finally getting tickets for Thebes Land, after frustratingly missing it’s run at the Arcola earlier this year, my expectations were incredibly high; I am overjoyed to tell you that the production certainly did not disappoint. Hearing rumours of a man imprisoned for patricide appearing live on-stage to perform his story in a 3 metre high cage seemed a fascinating, if slightly unusual, method of storytelling, but the minutiae of the production went much further than a back-page scandal ‘Making A Murderer’ documentary piece, deconstructing and analysing the layers of theatre and mythology surrounding the issues of on-stage representation.
Thebes Land follows the development of a relationship between Martin Santos, a young man imprisoned for killing his father, and ’T’, a writer and actor creating a theatre piece around Martin’s story. Staged as a re-enactment of a series of interviews between ’T’ and Martin, taking place on a prison basketball court, we follow the creation of a play, ‘Thebes Land’, through which method we increasingly learn about the characters, and their relationship to the outside world. Myth, reality and meta theatrical commentary become a seductive and inseparable conglomerate, blurring the line between the real and the fictional, instead emphasising, above all, the human.
The set is simple, but incredibly effective. At the centre of the space stands a 3 metre high cage, fitted with the necessary security cameras and basketball hoop. This space not only naturalistically echoes the location of the meetings between Martin and ’T’, the prison basketball court, but forces us to witness a life in isolation and seclusion, with the spatial and emotional relationship between the characters playing out behind, through and outside of the caged bars. The four cameras lining the space play live on four screens at the top of the theatre, emphasising the act of spectatorship similar to both theatre and prisons, and adding a filmic layer to the characters’ transactions.
The performances are absolutely superb, and thoroughly convincing. A two-hander that managers to hold the audience in the palm of their hand for the entire run time, the beauty of this piece comes in the creation of connection between the two actors, leaving the audience doubtless that this is not ‘acting’ in the genteel sense of the word, but that we are witnessing an authentic truth of what it means to be a human. The ease and skill with which Alex Austin characterises and physicalises his roles is a truly stunning feat and the kind confidence of Trevor White is magnetic to watch.
Thebes Land is genuinely one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve seen this year, and I thoroughly recommend buying a ticket, if you can possibly get your hands on one! Not only is it storytelling at its best, but it is a piece with exponential room for analysis, with layers of understanding and complexity that lends itself to contemplation and deconstruction. A think piece at its core, Thebes Land holds up to the light the most primal instinct of all humanity, the instinct to survive and defend one’s self. With an effervescent mix of comedy and dramatic tension, this unmissable piece brings forth questions of family, friendship, connection and fate.
