Theatre review: Autobahn

Published on Thursday 12 November 2009 18:01

AUTOBAHN **** TRON THEATRE, GLASGOW

IF EVER a new Scottish theatre initiative had the credentials for success, it's Theatre Jezebel, launched at the Tron this week. Its co-directors are Kenny Miller, former Citizens' design chief, and Mary McCluskey, of Scottish Youth Theatre; and their first show – the European premiere of Neil LaBute's 2004 short-play series Autobahn – has style and elegance to burn, as well as a notable commitment to high-powered Scottish acting.

The writing, though, is very strange stuff, an odd mixture of chilling brilliance, and heavy-handed, unconvincing social criticism. Each of the six playlets is set in the front seat of a moving car, and performed by a different male/female cast of two, sitting at the front of a line of flickering nightlights; on either side, another pair of actors wait their turn, in their own lane of the highway. All six plays involve women talking a lot and men talking very little; in two of them, the male partners remain completely silent. And each of the scenarios is both bitter and bleak. In Merge, for example, a long-suffering husband slowly works out that his wife has once again got drunk at a conference and had sex with a string of men; in Road Trip, a crazed woman teacher has kidnapped a pupil, sinisterly ruffling his hair as they drive along.

To say that this is depressing is an understatement; much of it is chillingly horrible and faintly misogynistic, and LaBute's final effort to use the Autobahn metaphor to sum up American alienation is staggeringly clumsy. Still, there's a streak of dark poetry here; and in a fine range of performances, Sally Reid, Lesley Hart, Angela Darcy and Alison Peebles stand out, as women whose failed or deeply damaged relationships inside the car mirror the coldness and disconnection of the atomised world outside.