Running at well under an hour each, these two short one act plays from the pen of master playwright Arthur Miller are immaculately performed and infused with poignancy.
In the first - “I Can’t Remember Anything” - real-life husband and wife David Burke and Anna-Calder Marshall are retired, arthritic engineer Leo (his brain struggling to complete the calculations he used to find so simple) and sad, whisky-downing, widowed Leonora, whose failing memory is even more wayward.
They’re the last survivors of what was once an extensive group of partying, politically principled New England friends. Now even their shared memories are at variance, their tempers short and their bodies weak. Yet when they dance together, briefly, one glimpses momentarily the essence of their former vibrant selves.
“Clara” focuses on the immediate aftermath of the murder of a young woman as a time-conscious detective (Roger Sloman) tries to prise details of her ex-offender boyfriend from her traumatised father. The bereaved parent (a compelling Rolf Saxon) either cannot or will not divulge his identity to the increasingly impatient policeman, fearful, at some deep level, that by doing so he will compromise his own liberal principles.
Written in 1987 when Miller was already in his 70’s, both plays demonstrate all the sensitivity of an older man’s experience of the tricks memory plays on us, and Ed Viney’s absorbing production proves another feather in the cap of this intimate theatre
In the first - “I Can’t Remember Anything” - real-life husband and wife David Burke and Anna-Calder Marshall are retired, arthritic engineer Leo (his brain struggling to complete the calculations he used to find so simple) and sad, whisky-downing, widowed Leonora, whose failing memory is even more wayward.
They’re the last survivors of what was once an extensive group of partying, politically principled New England friends. Now even their shared memories are at variance, their tempers short and their bodies weak. Yet when they dance together, briefly, one glimpses momentarily the essence of their former vibrant selves.
“Clara” focuses on the immediate aftermath of the murder of a young woman as a time-conscious detective (Roger Sloman) tries to prise details of her ex-offender boyfriend from her traumatised father. The bereaved parent (a compelling Rolf Saxon) either cannot or will not divulge his identity to the increasingly impatient policeman, fearful, at some deep level, that by doing so he will compromise his own liberal principles.
Written in 1987 when Miller was already in his 70’s, both plays demonstrate all the sensitivity of an older man’s experience of the tricks memory plays on us, and Ed Viney’s absorbing production proves another feather in the cap of this intimate theatre
Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST (020 7287 2875) Tube: Piccadilly Circus jermynstreettheatre.co.uk Until 23rd July £18
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