Photo: Tim Morozzo
It’s impossible not to have a visceral response to writer/director Graham Eatough’s timely How To Act. It’s the kind of theatre that burrows its way into your vital organs. Anthony Nicholl (Robert Goodale) is a director in the deeply earnest vein: part Berkoff, part Branagh, more than a little Brook, he’s a cringingly recognisable figure: the type who sees himself as outside of the establishment, while firmly entrenched in it. Initially, Goodale almost plays this smug, entitled man for laughs, using the theatrical cliches of entering a circle and ‘finding your truth’.
Yet truth is a slippery notion, as the young actor Promise (Jade Ogugua) discovers and uncovers, upon entering his ‘workshop’. In Nicholl’s hands, she is asked to regress, go to a kitchen where she hid under the table as a child during a dinner party, and then… Things get nasty. Promise, initially a sweet, smiling and compliant presence, gets furious and the power shifts. Matt Padden’s gorgeous soundscape envelops the audience as questions of coercion, behaviour and personal recollections interlock.
Photo: Tim Morozzo
Counter to what is presented on stage is Promise’s testimony, of the Nigerian oil industry in the 1970s, and the UK’s collusion in exploitation of both black women and natural resources. Both performances are superb, even if the ending’s direction is a little easy to guess. Above all, it’s a dense piece of work which dares to face off bigger questions of how the past informs the present, authenticity and collective responsibility. Challenging, witty and deeply uncomfortable.
(Lorna Irvine)
Reviewed at Tron Theatre, Glasgow.
At Traverse Theatre from March 13th -17th
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