Brutal Symbolism

Brutal Symbolism

21 July, 2008
by: Jimmy

'I am talking like theeese becoz I am Freenchhh, n'est ce pas?'

The Living Unknown Soldier at the Arcola has one of the worst openings of any play I've ever seen. First off there's a scene-setting monologue delivered by a supposed French Professor who then never re-appears. His speech illuminates nothing except (by way of the above line and others like it) a pitiable lack of faith in the intelligence of the audience and even more pitiable lack of faith in the actor's ability to render a convincing French accent. This is rapidly followed by a cringe inducing offstage chant of "We Will Remember Them" and then by a whirligig of max-factor-luvvie intensity as the cast fling themselves around the stage in a tortuously earnest 'crowd scene upon railway station platform'. It gets better from this point on – but not much. The Living Unknown Soldier doesn't stink it's just never very good.

Nominally the play tells the (true) story of Anthelme Mangin, a French soldier institutionalised with acute amnesia following the cessation of World War One. He cannot remember his name, his family or even who he is fighting for. The doctor who cares for him begins a campaign to find his family only to be inundated with thousands of responses from bereaved families convinced he is a lost son, brother or husband. By the time the likely family is found it all proves too late and Anthelme dies in 1942, by which time the Germans (toting the hammiest accents of all) are running the asylum.

Needless to say the story is almost entirely incidental as the plot is an excuse for a meditation on the nature of consciousness, personal identity, the fickleness of memory and all the other platitudes you'd associate with small post-modern theatre productions. As one character remarks Mangin's case is 'brutally symbolic' of the state of inter-war France (of blame, recrimination and misery without meaning or an ostensible target) but unfortunately, and probably inevitably, the play is equally brutal in addressing this by a procession of clunking examples of 'stage-craft'.

The most frequently employed 'decentring technique' is for the cast to randomly switch in and out of Mangin's role: switches that might have been exciting but for the fact this only requires them to sit, smoke and wear the bewildered expression of surprised roadkill. It's not easy to sympathise with a character so completely inert, especially when they're happily puffing away on their herbals while you and your beautiful date are surrounded by sweaty Hackney socialites. Meanwhile as one Mangin claimant follows another, unnecessary and increasingly desperate slapstick flops onto the stage like a series of apologies, before a particularly lame and infuriating ending in which no effort is made to distinguish between the nature of the two World Wars. Book ended with another chant of "We Will Remember Them" the effort to present the wars as equivalent examples of metaphysical futility – no matter how neat a framing device this might appear – is patently wrong.

Many of the play's faults are probably the result of the hodgepodge nature of its construction - the cast have adapted it themselves from the source history – while the didactic tendency of the direction tends to rub uncomfortably with the straight naturalism of, one guesses, the casts' instincts. Tony Guilfoyle gives a strong leading performance, while Mison also stands out in a variety of roles, oozing sleaze even in the midst of some extraordinarily banal exchanges. In spite of their efforts this is a fairly boring ninety minutes and though it's probably not too late to adjust the play into something more or less watchable, this the wrong season for remembrance pieces and I can't imagine a transfer for this production.

Review of the Living Unknown Soldier at the Arcola [Adapted from Jean-Yves le Naour’s biography of Anthelme Mangin: Le Soldat Inconnu Vivant]

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Jimmy