Mad Forest is the name of a wood near Bucharest whose oddly twisted trees make it very hard to negotiate. It's a fitting title for Caryl Churchill's tangled play. Written in the aftermath of the 1989 Romanian revolution, it explores the corrosive effect of leading a double life, and the way, in the vacuum that follows a revolution, hopes can be dashed and ideals compromised. Yet it still feels vivid and fresh. "I have spent 20 years marching in the wrong direction," laments a teacher who dutifully taught the Ceausescu curriculum, only to find herself ousted after the revolution.
Central to the play are two families from different backgrounds, linked by a love affair. In a series of brief scenes, we see snippets of life under Ceausescu, from whispered conversations to an abortion negotiated in a scene in which almost every word uttered is an untruth. Not surprisingly, this is a play in which silence speaks volumes.
As usual with Churchill, there is more than a touch of the surreal, with a vampire, a talking dog and even an angel. But the play's central sequence, in which people talk simply and movingly about their memories of the revolution, anticipates the current craze for verbatim theatre. And there is an astonishing scene in which a father, at odds with his son, tells a devastating and destructive lie.
Director Caroline Steinbeis, winner of this year's JMK award, has set herself a difficult task with Mad Forest; here she triumphs.
