The Prisoner, Edinburgh International Festival 2018

The Prisoner

Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, directed by Peter Brook

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 22^nd August 2018

This was a play I felt I had to see.  Legendary theatre director Peter Brook who has lived in Paris for the last several decades brought a new production to the Edinburgh International Festival.  The text was written by Brook and his co-director, Marie-Hélène Estienne.  The theme sounded strange.  Was it a ‘Waiting for Godot’ for our times, or was it the Emperor’s New Clothes?  I am firmly in the latter camp.

On a relatively bare stage, a few withered looking trees and some dirt, some stones i.e. somewhere in Africa; the production was 1 hour and 10 minutes long.  There was an Everyman figure, a white man.  Was he a journalist, a visitor, or just there for some commentary?  The other actors were of many races – Sri Lankan, Malian, Mexican, Indian.

At the start we are told very quickly that the central character has committed an unspeakable crime.  Incongruously we very quickly learn what it was.  He returned to his home to find his 13 year old sister having sex (consensual) with his (and her) father.  He then kills his father.  His uncle takes on the role of policeman, judge, executioner – at least he hits him on all four limbs with a stick, then turns him over to the authorities who pass a long prison sentence.  After a while his uncle intercedes on his behalf with the governor but tells him that although freed from prison he must sit in front of the prison for the foreseeable future.  The Prisoner faithfully undertakes this, irritating anybody who happens by, from the prison, the local village, the white man, and even later on his uncle.  Then for reasons that are unclear he skedaddles.  In the meantime, in a victim made good cliché, the daughter grows up and goes away to medical school, returns, and her uncle is very proud of her. It’s clear that one reason why her brother was enraged was his secret desire for his sister as well.  Perhaps this is why he finds his guilt difficult to expiate.

The acting is wooden, the script turgid, and as Dylan Thomas said ‘time passes’, though for me very slowly.

There is a metaphor in here somewhere, isn’t there?  There must be.  Perhaps I am too stupid to work it out.  A psychiatrist friend in the audience has a theory that it is a plea for the plight of refugees.  The only possible message that I could take away was that ‘stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’.  Has somebody said that before perhaps?  Yes, in 1642 to be exact.  While not in prison, we are perhaps prisoners of what we have done, at least if we have the conscience to seek redemption for it.  Psychopaths of course do not worry about niceties like that.

Now in ‘Waiting for Godot’, at least nothing happens twice.  In the Prisoner quite a bit happens but it doesn’t seem to have the same impact.  My own feeling about Waiting for Godot is that it takes some remarkable actors to make it work.  Watching Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in the play recently I was struck by what the actors do when not saying their lines.  In Godot this is at least as important as the lines themselves.  It’s no coincidence that one of the greatest interpretations of Vladimir was that of Max Wall, who, although a fine actor, could be classified (in the greatest and most admirable sense) as a Pierrot.  As Brook says in his introduction, the pauses are often as important as the lines, and he specifically mentions Beckett’s theatre directions which say (Pause).  The pause often heightens the menace in Pinter’s plays as well.  But here it seemed stilted only.

In all fairness, I should add that Joyce McMillan, writing in The Scotsman, took a different view.  In a breathlessly gushy rave review headlined ‘Captivating set of brief encounters’ she finishes by telling us that the show ‘…achieves a magnificent balance of stillness, relaxation and narrative tension; compelling us to pause, to breathe and to reflect, but also moving the story towards its end with the inevitability and energy of a natural force, harnessed by an absolute master.’  Hmm.