Review: Thom Pain at The Print Room

Review: Thom Pain at The Print Room

23 September, 2012
by: DominicdiNezza

A perfect rendition of Will Eno's Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) is running at The Print Room. Get yourself there, says Dominic DiNezza

Classifying Will Eno’s feature-length monologue is a tricky business. It could be either scripted confessional, misfiring stand-up or intrusive drama.

Whichever combination you prefer, Thom Pain is a startling creation – almost Beckettian in his unease with the purpose and nature of his existence, but devoid of the dramatic convention that keeps him onstage, at a distance. This entity - clad in a suit and tie that he seems to feel he should, rather than wants to be wearing - simply doesn’t have the concept of (to quote Thom Yorke) where he ends and we begin. It’s this awkward insinuation, this imperfect knowledge of dramatic convention that brings Pain’s eerie, Coen Brothers-esque memories of traumatic early childhood and thwarted love vivdly to life. It’s a story that we’re accustomed to hearing, only told as we fear we might one day tell it – agonised, imprecise, constantly striving for empathy and engagement with our own insecurities as the biggest, insurmountable obstacle.

John Light’s performance is stunning. His Pain is a man dangling from reality not by a thread, but by a ribbon of plasticine, which could at any moment part and shrink back on itself as if it were never there. The balance between Pain himself and the personality of the actor is a delicate one and director Simon Evans keeps Light on the right (i.e. wrong) side of consummate stage presence. The effect suggests Daniel Kitson with severe PTSD, armoured by Light’s enthrallingly mellifluous delivery, which (notwithstanding Eno’s inescapably American vernacular) sounds at times like it’s coming straight from a vinyl record.

You should see this show. You might not want to, possibly even whilst you’re there, but you really should.

Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) runs The Print Room until 13th October

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DominicdiNezza