The Guests
I don’t like one woman shows on principal. They are contrived and fairly annoying, unless it’s Allan Bennett and then I’m easily swung, sorry. I have had huge arguments with people about the pointlessness of watching one person on stage for an hour and a half spill out their story; I don’t think it is theatre, it is boring stand-up, and it’s like confessional poetry.
I went however, despite my prejudice to a production of The Guests at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden. It is a little known short play written by the playwright and screenwriter, Ronald Harwood, if you don’t know his name you will know his works, which include The Pianist, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Dresser.
Taking those films into consideration, you will be aware of what power the script had, turning the make-believe of the character in to a real horror story (not that it was actually horror, nothing like The Woman in Black).
Lucy Sierra’s design was pretty bare- a rusting bed frame, a few draws strewn around. There was also an array of cutlery at the front that became a noisy dinner table, and then the actress who was sitting like a prop on the bed.
The play started with normality, a little fraught but as the play unfolded you became aware that you were being let into a chaos of madness. The play was terrifyingly claustrophobic, with an untiring performance from Camilla Corbett. It was incredible she sustained, even above the noise of the pub below, the Etcetera Theatre bragging to be the smallest theatre in London, and the dodgy lighting, the performance shone through.
The Guests was directed by Vivien Munn, the story taking you through the problems of isolation within ones thoughts, and the attempt to continue social niceties even in the most difficult of situations. It felt a very English play, probably because it was written in 1972, but it still rang true.
Not only a one woman show, we had to swim through the net of emotional baggage and reached a fraught state. Go and see it, before it’s too late.
More here.
Aquila Dunford Wood