Ellie and I watched Craig Wright’s fabulous The Unseen at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith last night. Political theatre at its best!
FACES OF RUSSIAN RESISTANCE AT THE UNSEEN AT RIVERSIDE STUDIOS
Studio 3 with a capacity of 172, was perhaps filled to about three quarters with spectators, an okay turnout, considering it was a rather cold and miserable Monday evening far away from London’s bustling Westend. On your way past the box office and reception area to the theatre you pass by the excellent photo exhibition “Faces of Russian Resistance” by Elena Filina, which has already been shown around cities in much of Western Europe. It is particularly moving, because it does not only show the big heroes, like Navalny, but also many every-day people from all walks of life, some of whom not even particularly political and with no history of activism.
All pics incl. feature photograph (c) Manuel Harlan.
A SCARY WELCOME AT THE UNSEEN AT RIVERSIDE STUDIOS
When you enter the theatre, two of the three actors of the play, the ones who play the political prisoners, are already on stage. Slowly moving around. Looking convincingly desperate. With blank thousand-yard stares. No hope left in their dead eyes.
SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE STAGE DESIGN
The stage design is simple but effective. We look at three adjacent cells, delineated by about one-foot-high walls, with an elevated corridor behind them. A prison wall with megaphone-style loudspeakers and red alarm lamps is behind the corridor at the far end of the stage. A bit more than a metre away from the audience, a narrow stretch forms the corridor in front of the cells, where the cell doors are supposed to be. The middle cell is empty. In the left cell you see Valdez, a former theatre actor, and in the right cell Dr. Wallace, a former GP. Each of those two cells contains a narrow metal bench, a bucket in lieu of a toilet, a plate and a bowl.
VALDEZ AND WALLACE PLAYING WORD GAMES AT THE UNSEEN AT RIVERSIDE STUDIOS
We took our seats and shortly thereafter the light in the auditorium faded. The play began. We watch Valdez and Wallace, who can hear each other but cannot see each other through the implied two cell walls and the empty cell in the middle. They are playing a game, where they imagine that they are going to the beach and are buying things in alphabetical order, we presume, to keep their minds sharp. To my shame I can’t quite remember which items they chose, but something like “I went to the beach and bought an artwork, a bunny, and a Caesar salad.” Then the other one goes “I went to the beach and bought an artwork, a bunny, a Caesar salad, and a dachshund.” And so on.
THE ANXIETY BUILDS UP AT THE UNSEEN AT RIVERSIDE STUDIOS
Valdez and Wallace have no idea how they ended up in this nameless prison in a nameless country. The anticipation and anxiety build up, as their little play with words stops and the conversation turns to the torture they have endured and the pains they have suffered, their thoughts about their situation and about life, and how Smash, the violent prison warden, is about to arrive at any minute now.
SMASH, THE PRISON WARDEN
Throughout the play we encounter Smash on various occasions where he verbally and physically abuses them, carries them away to torture them, brings them back from having been tortured. Most importantly, though, we watch Smash tell the prisoners about how his role is wearing him down. Haunting him. How he feels terror looking at the frightened and tortured victims, the sounds they make, their horrified eyes.
“CAN I TRUST YOU”
In one scene, while they are alone in their cells, Valdez asks Wallace if he can trust him. The academically trained, anal, annoyingly rational, and amusingly irritating Dr Wallace points out in great detail why Valdez’s question does not make any sense, causing hearty laughs among the audience, like on various further occasions during the play. It becomes clear that Valdez doesn’t need any reason, he just wants Wallace to confirm that he, Valdez, can trust him. When Wallace finally does so, Valdez tells him a story full of madness.
INITIALLY CRAIG WRIGHT’S THE UNSEEN WAS GOING TO BE ABOUT JESUS
This is probably a good time in the review at hand to point out that Craig Wright had initially been commissioned to write a play about Jesus, in 2007. What he came up with was The Unseen. Hartford Stage, the good people who had commissioned the play, couldn’t find much Jesus in the play, so Wright lost the commission and went ahead with it on his own. Thank heavens.
VALDEZ GONE WACKO
Valdez has clearly gone wacko. He believes that someone, a woman, is being held in the cell between their two cells. Moreover and even more disturbingly, he believes that the lady has been there since the beginning of time and that she will help him and Wallace to escape today.
OBSCENE BRUTALITY AT THE UNSEEN AT RIVERSIDE STUDIOS
Apart from saying that there will be a scene, a purely verbal description, not actual physical enactment, of obscene brutality and over-the-top torture and murder, I will not go further into the plot, in order to avoid spoilers. What I will say is that the roughly 80 minutes of the play felt like way less than an hour. Many reviewers, for fairly obvious reasons, have compared the play with Waiting for Godot, but, apart from perfectly valid parallels, the latter moves a lot slower and feels a million times longer. I love Godot, but boy oh boy it does have its lengths, and intentionally so.
CRAIG WRIGHT, THE PLAYWRIGHT, AND IYA PATARKATSISHVILI, THE DIRECTOR
Craig Wright, the playwright, is an interesting character, whom, I freely admit, I had not come across before. Despite having written a number of highly acclaimed plays over the years, he is mainly known for having scripted the TV series Dirty Sexy Money, and episodes of Six Feet Under and Lost. According to the current production’s director, Iya Patarkatsishvili, she and Wright adapted the play for the Riverside Studios production. The Unseen is Patarkatsishvili’s debut as a director, and she was assisted by James Robert Moore.
BRILLIANT ACTING BY WAJ ALI, RICHARD HARRINGTON, AND ROSS TOMLINSON
While the play itself is an impressive work in its own right, what made last night special to Ellie and me was the brilliant acting by the marvellous actors: Waj Ali (Valdez), Richard Harrington (Wallace), and Ross Tomlinson (Smash). All three of them conveyed an immediacy and intensity you do not come across that often these days. As an ultra-runner I have to admit that I’m also heavily impressed by the fact that Richard Harrington finished the Marathon des Sables ten years ago, well done there.
SO WHAT IS CRAIG WRIGHT’S THE UNSEEN ABOUT ACCORDING TO THE DIRECTOR…
In an interview with London Cult, the director, Iya Patarkatsishvili, said that the play “is an invitation to discuss topics that may be uncomfortable but are nonetheless vital. I try to avoid moralising, so for me, theatre is a platform for open discussion where all sides are ready to change their perspective if presented with convincing arguments. […] I pursue several goals. First, to draw attention to the issue of political prisoners in Russia through art. The second goal is to invite reflection on human nature, urging people not to close their eyes to uncomfortable truths about ourselves. […] Additionally, it’s a philosophical narrative that explores themes of not just the necessity but also the danger of hope, guilt, the desire to look away and be ‘non-political,’ learned helplessness, and the cost of survival under such inhumane conditions.”
…AND WHAT DID OTHERS SAY ABOUT IT?
The Stage’s Tom Wicker writes that Valdez and Wallace are “Beckettian characters caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare, where horror is mundane. […] [The playwright] digs into something true in the characters’ struggles to maintain their identities in unbearable circumstances.”
DON’T MISS OUT ON THE UNSEEN AT RIVERSIDE STUDIOS
There used to be so many political plays on the London stage. Five, ten years ago, it seemed like almost every play Ellie and I went to see, was political, from Enron, via the Wish List, to The Jungle, nowadays not so much anymore. This riveting, thought-provoking production of an important, highly relevant play deserves a 5 out of 5 in my view. Don’t miss out on it. There are still plenty of tickets available from now until 14 December.
Looking for more theatre reviews? Feel welcome to check out my write-ups about Cutting the Tightrope at the Arcola Theatre, The Lehman Trilogy, Hansard, and The Other Place, After Antigone, at the NT, or White Rabbit Red Rabbit at Soho Place. I’ve also blogged about Wayne McGregor’s MADDADDAM ballet with the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, about Frameless, the immersive art experience, about Frieze London art fair, and MoCo, the modern and contemporary art museum.
