This new production at the Finborough offers a fresh translation by Simon Stephens of a German play of 1972 by Franz Xaver Kroetz, which was later revised into the better known Through the Leaves. Its first outing was in Dublin earlier this year at the Glass Mark theatre, run by lead actor Rex Ryan, and now it moves to London.
The play is about as unlovely and unloving as it is possible to be. Deliberately so. An exercise in social realism, shading at points into theatre of the absurd, it takes two unappealing characters, lacking in self-knowledge and self-awareness, and explores their abusive and ultimately violent relationship. Charlie, is a single woman in her thirties who has taken over her father’s butcher’s shop. She is inexperienced in relationships, not particularly good looking, and apparently living for her work, apart from her devotion to her dog. Victor, is a steel worker of around forty, whose bundle of characteristics amounts to a check-list of toxic masculinity. He thinks he is an average bloke, but his self-centredness, fondness for porn and beer, and gaslighting of Charlie is relieved only by brittle signs of inner insecurity. It is a fairly glum and grim combination, though some shafts of comedy break through. There is a petit bourgeois pettiness about some of the dialogue that evokes satirical shades of Orton, and the excesses of the final fifteen minutes tip over into absurdist parody that produced outright laughter from the press night audience.
These are, however, the sorts of challenges that talented actors relish, and both Rex Ryan and Lauren Farrell deliver outstanding performances in ungrateful, uncompromising roles. Ryan captures the posturing, macho swagger and peevish self-regard of Victor admirably, and Farrell precisely embodies Charlie’s slide from self-possessed self-employed through to desperate passive-aggressive victimhood as she abases herself in attempting to hold on to Ryan. Both are deluded as to their own motivations and the consequences of their own actions. There is a lot of ugly and uncomfortable sex in the course of the action and it is a kind of compliment to the skill of the actors that the bad sex is so credible in the broader context of the play. The only chink of positivity comes from the third actor, Cooper, a wonderfully self-possessed assistance dog. who makes an unflustered appearance, as Charlie’s pet. Fine proof that there are exceptions to the traditional principle that you should never work with kids or animals.
The bleakly clinical set by Andrew Clancy is another example of how the difficulties posed by a very small performance space often produces a superbly inventive response. A plain, tiled interior and a rack of knives and joints are all you need to suggest the back room of the butcher’s shop, while the only furniture is a chopping table with a couple of stools and a bench to suggest a bed. The crudity of the furnishing reinforces the crude and brutal nature of the action. However, if the close proximity to the action enhances the impact of the play on the audience, the many shifts of the basic furniture between the many short scenes break up the flow and unfortunately slacken the pace.
This is an evening of dispiriting distinction, that provokes many thoughts, but not a desire to return.
Franz Xaver Kroetz, in a new translation by Simon Stephens
Director: Ross Gaynor
Cast: Cooper (German Shepherd), Lauren Farrell, Rex Ryan
Until 12 April
90 mins no interval
Photo Credit: Rio Redwood-Sawyerr