Love it or hate it, you'll definitely talk about it

Published on Monday 25 February 2008 08:06

Six Characters in Search of An Author **** Royal Lyceum

LOVE or hate this revival of Pirandello's classic play at the Royal Lyceum, it will provoke plenty of debate and discussion long after it ends.

Which should not be too surprising – riots greeted the first performance of the play in Italy in 1921, and it was so "upsetting", it was banned by Lord Chamberlain from public performance in England.

It sets out calmly enough. Indeed, under Mark Thomson's astute direction for this co-production with the Glasgow Citizens and the National Theatre of Scotland, it is even a bit old hat, with a troupe of rather hammy old thespians coming on to the empty stage to rehearse a Pirandello play.

This is nothing more than a beautifully observed take on the theatrical process. Which, in this version of the play by David Harrower, is set in a 1920s Scottish theatre.

Eric Barlow puts in an excellently comic turn as the taciturn stage manager who clearly believes the stage belongs to him. He forces the wide-eyed ASM Romana Abercromby to help him sweep up – making lead actor Benny Young and actress Carol Ann Crawford leap out his way.

As the rehearsal progresses under the draconian control of John Dougall as the director, the company recreate something of what must have been the norm at theatres like the Lyceum. The fascinating element, so far, being in the way the actors present different faces to each other.

The twee-ness has to stop, however. And it does so with the arrival of a bizarre group in one of the theatre boxes. They are, announces Ron Donachie who plays father, characters. Characters created for a melodrama and abandoned when the playwright lost interest in his script.

They have arrived in the theatre to ask the company too perform their play, to act it out on the stage so that they can find solace.

Suddenly the twee, slightly incestuous air that hangs over the opening scenes is gone. And as the actors begin to become convinced by the characters, so a new kind of magic settles on the stage.

Dominated by father and Amy Manson as his outspoken and resentful stepdaughter, the characters act out first a scene where he, not recognising her, attempts to buy her services in a brothel, and then the tragic final act to their drama when young stepbrother and sister commit suicide. The actors fail to find the same depths in their interpretation.

Small wonder at the original audience's outrage. Whether the Lyceum's audience will be similarly scandalised will depend on how they view the play itself. Is it an attempt to discuss the nature and representation of character, or to discuss the way that theatre itself, expresses the truth?

In reality it seems to be trying to do both. In terms of character, Thomson has succeeded supremely well. All the different shades of characterisation are there and cleverly connected to the audience.

The discussion of theatre as a means for expressing the truth is less clear-cut. But as the superbly staged moment in the brothel shows, the imagination sees what the theatre is unable to show.

A fascinating production which makes the plot easy to follow and is gripping, from start to finish.

Run ends March 8