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The Elephant Man
by Mary Swan & Saul Jaffe
Directed by Mary Swan
Designed by Sam Pine
Music by Paul Wild
Greenwich Theatre
Crooms Hill, Greenwich, London SE10
Call +44 0208 858 7755 Tickets £10 -£12
Touring
Running time 1 hour 30 with no intermission
Through August, 2008
Not a Pretty Sight
An old style music hall warm-up man banters with the audience pretending to have either nothing or not much to do with the production. Sadly, that is uncomfortably near the truth.
For some moments the rather tantalising prospect is held out that poor John Merrick, known to the world as The Elephant Man is going to be shown us as a kind of freak-show attraction. But this prospect fades as Saul Jaffe, affecting this traditionally seedy, self deprecating warm-up man with a party trick of his own, which does not impress, goes on and on.
Just as I was wondering if I was in the wrong theatre, the irritating M/C character morphs into the famous Elephant Man. This transformation has a gripping and tragic quality, and it becomes clear that Mary Swan and Saul Jaffe, the duo comprising devisers, writers, director and performer, have misled one another as to the direction of the piece. Where is Tom Stoppard when you need him? He would have put his script doctor’s pencil through three quarters of this hit and miss hotchpotch of an offering.
Alternating between poor characterisations badly performed, and the extraordinary Elephant Man, beautifully performed, Miss Swan and Mr Jaffe took a flower of a subject and gilded the lily all night, until the end became a longed for prospect.
Building on the sideshow idea, a circus trapeze was employed for one of the tiresome visual effects that had little to offer except to break the boredom, others being hospital screens, clumsily manipulated like a drama school improvisation exercise, and a gramophone style slide projector with water thrown at it. Poor Mr Jaffe embarrassingly even used tailor’s dummies who were supposed to portray different characters. In the silly process almost all poignant truth was lost. A rare special moment was achieved, however, when in an inspired piece of invention, John Merrick, perched uncomfortably on a chaise longue, reads aloud from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
Perhaps the actor’s face, body and voice were not capable of more of it, but there was only one character that remained in the memory, and that was the title role. With the work that clearly went into that compelling vision, the audiences at the Edinburgh Festival where the production is heading in August after a small scale tour, might be spared some of the dross and given the real heart of the story.
Most irritating aspect of the evening was the search for the Greenwich Theatre. Clearly the council can’t be bothered to direct people to one of London’s premier Off West End venues, preferring to devote its energies to the Cutty Sark, for example. For those who might be forgiven for thinking that I am referring to a rather good whisky, the Cutty Sark is an antique spice clipper moored at Greenwich, and whose main claim to fame, other than being pretty, is that it was torched last year and is being restored. I wonder how many tourists come to these shores to see that, compared with the hundreds of thousands who come for the theatre. I would advise intrepid souls going to Greenwich for this theatre, and who might find themselves wandering around in the rain, as I did, to at least avoid the underground and Docklands Light Railway whose signage is as appalling as Greenwich Council’s, and rather take the over-ground from Charing Cross or London Bridge, and ask for directions. Perhaps by the time of the Olympics in 2012 some signs might have been put up. Don’t watch this space.
Somewhat Recommended
Saul Reichlin
London correspondent
Talk Theatre in Chicago Podcast
www.ChicagoCritic.com
28 April 2008
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