In a Dark Dark House January 4, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , trackbackI left the theatre shell-shocked last Monday after seeing Michael Attenborough’s produciton of Neil La Bute’s deep, dark story of lies and violence in a family and the effect on two brothers many years later. How David Morrissey (Terry) and Steven Mackintosh (Drew) do this night after night is beyond me.
Morrisey and Mackintosh
I wanted to see David Morrissey on the stage, and because I’ve recently started some charity work dealing with sex offenders this play appealed. It’s not easy to watch, or entertainment in any normal sense of the word, but if the theatre holds a mirror up to nature, this illuminates some of the difficult, grey areas around crimes which society sees as the worst of all.
The play is in three acts, each a duologue exploring a side of the story.
In the first, the two brothers meet. Drew is in a psychiatric hospital, and tells Terry that he was abused as a child. Terry tried, and failed, to protect him.
The second act’s flirtation between Terry and American actress Kara Sternbach’s fifteen year old Jennifer is very uncomfortable – she oscillates from seductress to innocence, only partly aware of what she’s doing, one moment keen to carry it through, the next scared and unsure, and shows so clearly why it is the adult who must be responsible in this situation.
The final act’s denouement is as awful as it is unexpected. The manipulative pederasts’s excuse that ‘the child enjoyed it’ is firmly shown up for the lie it is, as Terry admits to having been a willing participant in his own abuse – “it made me feel important for once” - but also to unbearable conflict about his own sexuality and feelings because of it. He may well have in some sense been willing at the time, but he’s still thoroughly mixed up and badly broken now.
This play challenges ideas about families, manipulation and sex offending. It’s raw, honest and painful.
“In a Dark Dark House” runs at the Almeida until 17 January. Seat C5 in the stalls offered an excellent view, very close to the stage.
Comments»
I was very intrigued to see if and how a staging of this play would clarify any of several plot points I was unsure about when I finished reading the play. While the actors did a superb job, I was very disappointed that the play staged at the Almeida was not the same play I read, even though my copy said it was the “revised” off-Broadway version. Instead of the tantalizing and disturbing ambiguities in the version I had read, the rewritten version being presented pretty much spells everything out and makes for a much less interesting story. If anything, it seems as though Neil Labute has gone “soft” on us, but based on a program note, I attribute most of the tinkering to the director, who should have left well enough alone. I would still highly recommend seeing this production, but it could have been much more effective if staged as written.