Written for Time Out
If a hermit falls over, does he make a noise?' That's more or less the question asked by James Saunders's 1962 play, though it begs another: might these two hours be just as well spent elsewhere?
A neglected precursor to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Saunders's text is undoubtedly profound, but ultimately inconsequential. Like Tom Stoppard's play, it has grown stale and its passé postmodernism now seems an indulgent display of mental gymnastics.
Saunders uses the theatre to explore existentialism, as actors and writer discuss their predicament, trapped by script and stage: 'You said that last night,' etc, etc. However, you need a working knowledge of existentialism to keep up and, if you've already got that, the play adds little extra. It's wittily clever-clever but, really, what's the point?
To work, the play needs to fizz like popping candy, but Anthony Clark trots out a 1970s corduroy-and-turtleneck staging rather than finding a contemporary tone. That does Roger Parkins no favours as the clownish Meff, who is too forcedly old school to be funny, though Brendan Patricks is nicely withering as his opposite number Dust (imagine Withnail, sober and in work) and Aden Gillett finds the tension in pretension as writer/director Rudge.
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