Tucked away in the intimate Clare studio at the back of the Young Vic is
Fireface, a 1997 work by German playwright Marius von Mayenburg, directed by
Sam Pritchard, the winner of the 2012 JMK Award for visionary new theatre
directors. And with the aid of an intriguingly strong cast and Amanda Stoodley’s
wide chipboard frame of a set, forming a timber cage for a dysfunctional family
to play out their not-inconsiderable dramas, Pritchard has certainly made the
most of his opportunity.
Quite how one judges his measure of success though is a matter of debate. He
clearly has a keen eye for the highly theatrical: switching from having the
actors sitting facing the audience and speaking their lines out to us rather
than to each other to a more naturalistic style with a dizzying frequency and
overlapping the scenes to increase the disconcerting effect of estrangement. It
initially feels apt as a way to evoke the disquiet at the heart of this family
home where Kurt and Olga are seething with teenage injustice, railing against
their distracted parents and exploring an increasingly too-close bond full of
burning desire.
The tension between the two styles is never quite satisfactorily resolved
though, the figurative levels of Maja Zade’s translation somewhat at odds with
Mayenburg’s indictment of the bourgeois middle classes, and Pritchard doesn’t
quite marry everything together. Visual ideas like the imprisoning red tape are
left under-developed with little sense of the set ever representing something
bigger, more societal, to justify the larger metaphor at work here; and the lack
of time spent delving into the psyches of these teenagers – especially the
sexually questioning Olga – means the realistic side lacks bite too.
But there’s strength in performance too which helps to hold the production
together. Helen Schlesinger and David Annen lend immense class to the parents
blithely sure that all the incest and psychosis going on under their nose is
just a phase, William Postlethwaite’s interloping new boyfriend forms a neat
counterpoint to the screwed intensity of Rupert Simonian’s Kurt and Aimeé-Ffion
Edwards confirms her onward rise to becoming one of our most interesting young
actresses as she wrestles the slipperiness of Olga nearly into submission.
At times striking, at times frustrating, Fireface is rarely dull and whilst it may never become truly compelling, for me I'd say it is an interesting enough piece - with its cast and with its directorial enthusiasm - to merit investigation.
Running time: 90 minutes (with interval)
Programme cost: free cast-sheet available
Booking until 20th October
Note: full-frontal male nudity contained within