March 2, 2010
STAGE
Neil LaBute trilogy
Greenwich Theatre
4/5
IN A NUTSHELL
With The Furies linked to Helter Skelter and Land Of The Dead, Dialogue Productions launches a pincer movement against the human heart.
REVIEW
In the end what have we got? A few shards shooting around our system, reminding us that once we were connected, that we are not divorced from our actions.
Shards that steal our breath and reason. The residual fall-out from acts of "emotional terrorism".
That undercurrent of tension links these three short plays by Neil LaBute staged, by director Patricia Benecke, with bleak simplicity to counterpoint the complexity of worlds shattered by betrayal and violence.
LaBute picks up his characters when they've crossed the line, or are about to cross the line, and he watches as they dig themselves into holes trying to rationalise their guilt and turn it into something almost... beautiful.
Frances Grey, Stuart Laing and Patrick Driver are affecting and dysmorphic here, with Grey requiring the greatest swing of emotions. Her plight(s) are writ large in blinking, rheumy eyes which flicked left and right but never had the resolution to focus.
Of the three Land Of The Dead is the sharpest - a man and a woman apart emotionally and physically as she contemplates an abortion on a fateful day when the words "too late" never seemed more pertinent.
Helter Skelter is the richest, charting the fluctuating battle lines of a couple coming to terms with infidelity.
The Furies, the weakest and most unfelt, is an extended skit with two gay lovers splitting hairs over a break-up, one fed poisonous retorts by his witch of a sister.
Despite their silkiness, none was comfortable and each found an explosive, exaggerated climax to give the feuding a final flourish.
LaBute knows how people talk and he knows how they act. He doesn't judge because he finds grace and disgrace in equal measure.
