“The audience are kept on the edge of their seats with plenty of will-they-won’t-they moments in the script”
Michael Aleen (Gwithian Evans) is a young man who communicates best when he’s sharing facts about elephants. He’s also institutionalised and is smarter than anyone in the entire hospital. At least, that’s how Nurse Peterson describes him.
The Elephant Song is a poignant three-hander about perception, humanity and trauma, deftly handled by the cast with a lightness of touch that allows the heavier bits to sit just long enough, but which are then expertly transformed into levity thanks to the cast’s and director (Jason Moore’s) impeccable comic timing.
Dr Greenberg (Jon Osbaldeston) is the hospital’s director – on the hunt for missing Dr Lawrence who has disappeared from the psychiatric ward. Michael was the last person to see him alive. The two prowl around the stage together – Michael, playing games with the director, while Dr Greenberg struggles with containing his frustration and bubbling anger. At times it seems as though he might attack Michael and give him a good shake, but Michael is always one step ahead, and this cat and mouse play is perfectly brought together by Moore’s direction.
The constant presence of Nurse Peterson (Louise Faulkner) with her no-nonsense advice to Dr Greenberg is a reassuring one – Faulkner plays her in a matronly way, which is the perfect antidote to the unpredictability of the two men. It’s times with Nurse Peterson that Michael seems most relaxed and the way the cast change their pitch and delivery as frequently as Michael’s mood changes is fascinating to watch.
The audience are kept on the edge of their seats with plenty of will-they-won’t-they moments in the script, written in 2002 by Nicolas Billon. We become part of the same game Michael is orchestrating and at times, the tension is so finely curated by the cast and crew that the air in the theatre appears to freeze, before relaxing each moment finger by finger so the audience is released back to play the game again. Michael really likes playing games, Nurse Peterson tells Dr Greenberg when he arrives.
The set, designed by Ian Nicholas, was pared back enough to allow the dialogue to take centre stage, but there were some nice design touches that were incorporated into the play. The Newton’s Cradle was used to create audible tension, while the ticking metronome played its part when Michael asked Dr Greenberg about his wife’s biological clock. I especially enjoyed the range of psychiatry pictures on the back wall, including a framed print of the Rorschach Test.
If there’s one weak point, it’s that some parts of the script haven’t aged well. There are some slightly uncomfortable fat-shaming jokes and use of the C-word that may have been more acceptable when the script was written, but now feel like unnecessary additions. Of course this is out of the hands of the brilliant actors and director – but perhaps just an interesting reminder that the world is changing quickly, and theatre is an interesting place to see that happen in real time.
“The script feels very polished, and so packed with jokes and one-liners it can sometimes feel like the characters are being held at arm’s length”
The play opens from the point of view of a car crashing into a stag, quite a mean feat given that we’re watching Sons of the Prophet on Hampstead Theatre’s main stage. It gives us some inkling of the deft way director Bijan Sheibani will take this 11-year-old play by Stephen Karam and bring each line to life, directing but not smothering the actors, to deliver a pitch-perfect production.
Sons of the Prophet centres around the story of gay Lebanese-America Maronite Christian Joseph Douaihy (Irfan Shamji) who is trying to support his family in the wake of his father’s death. We meet his brother Charles (Eric Sirakian) and his uncle Bill (Raad Rawi) as Joseph lies in the hospital waiting for news from the doctor.
Karam writes the family’s dynamics perfectly. The bedside bickering is funny – this is a dark comedy after all – but it’s funny in an exhausting, claustrophobic way. Each family member repeatedly tells each other to stop talking, yet none of them do, and when Joseph puts his arm across his face the audience can feel the waves of stress emanating from him (all compounded by navigating the grim-sounding US healthcare system). Concurrently, Joseph must manage his Uncle Bill’s devout Marronite faith and optimism – “I’m saying be grateful, at least you have your health” – “I don’t have my health, we’re in a doctor’s office because my knees are radiating hot pain!”
Supporting characters propel the story forward as it hurtles towards an end with no resolutions, because that’s what happens to families like Douaihy’s in rural Pennsylvania. It transpires his dad’s car accident was caused by a star of Cedar Crest High School’s football team putting a fake stag in the middle of the road to see who would swerve to avoid it – we meet Vin (Raphael Akuwudike) as he attempts to apologise to the family with a terrible essay. The supporting cast, played by Holly Atkins and Sue Wallace (Physicians Assistant, Ticket Agent etc) are sublime, and both deserve a spin-off show for their extraordinarily well-brought-to-life characters. I would like to watch each of them on stage, for longer.
At points the stage feels like a 21st century Fawlty Towers, as Joseph tries to manage a revolving door of disastrous encounters and people (his horrific boss Gloria, played by Juliet Cowan, who makes everything about her), and news reporter/brief love interest Timothy (Jack Holden) who is desperate to break into the TV bigtime by exploiting the Douaihy family tragedy.
The script feels very polished, and so packed with jokes and one-liners it can sometimes feel like the characters are being held at arm’s length. The actors, with the exception of a few wavering American accents, fly with the lines. Any bumps lie entirely with the script, which feels extremely American, and an interesting choice for Hampstead Theatre in London 2022 (prompting the usual questions, why here, why now?) Perhaps it’s because it’s an omen of what life could become in Britain in the next 10 years under the wrong government hell-bent on privatising the NHS: a stark warning of the extra layers of stress and financial worry that will burden almost every family.
The set design (Samal Blak) is stark and unfussy, with a beautiful use of levels, which helps to tie in all the disparate family elements. Aline David’s movement direction introduces a sense of calmness at times during the show when it’s most necessary.
The play deals with the true sense of what it means to be human, as it revolves around the teachings of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet (On Pain, On Passion, On Work, etc). Explicit instructions in the playtext recommend that each character at heart is human – “Gloria may say ridiculous things, but her mannerisms aren’t ridiculous.” Karam calls for the play to be staged in ‘explicitly human spaces’.
The calmness of the final scene, as Joseph meets his kindergarten teacher while he does physiotherapy, is most poignant, and provides respite from his life’s chaos. He confides in her that the last time he was happy was when he was aged four, and although the line is delivered as a joke, there’s a pause from the audience before we laugh, as we all reflect en-masse that life is hard, and at times it can feel like a rolling wheel of disasters.
The play is tight, well-written, superbly acted, and an easy 105 minutes (no interval!) watch. It lifts rather than shatters, and does it with serious humour and a whack of seriously good acting.
