Impossible to write this weekend without pausing to mourn the passing of Elizabeth MacLennan, actress and co-founder of the popular, radical theatre company 7:84. Her huge contribution to Scottish theatre helped to create the fertile ground that today nourishes so many artists and companies, including National Theatre of Scotland. Here, NTS impressively (if not entirely successfully) transfers Muriel Spark’s 1970 novella to the stage.
In Spark’s “whydunnit”, readers are given no access to Lise’s inner thoughts and motivations as she embarks on a lone holiday in search of a man she claims she will recognise when she sees him. Laurie Sansom (writer and director) constantly reminds the audience we are watching a constructed reality. The stage manager is present in unmasked wings. Striking settings, by Ana Inés Jabares Pita, are minimally suggestive. Light and sound (Chris Davey and Philip Pinsky respectively) eloquently evoke locations (humming office, hustling airport, dingy hotel room, busy department store, grimy garage, deserted industrial estate, a park after dark). Actors adroitly manipulate chairs, tables and stepladders to evoke aeroplane cabin, escalators, cars; they shape-shift the people Lise (Morven Christie) encounters with skill (were they really only six?).
The action takes place in double-time. Lise’s progress through her last day on Earth runs parallel with flash-forwards reconstructing the close-of-day crime. When not in role, the company occasionally narrate or film aspects of some encounters; these are projected as huge close-ups on giant walls, in single or multiple images. The actors as detectives quietly construct an incident wall – papers proliferate as we watch.
The feel is sharp, stylish, edgy, exciting. Lise’s identity-fragmenting lies and evasions intrigue – until her plan becomes transparent. Ultimately, Sansom is too faithful to a text whose interest is its narrative technique. In three-dimensional space and time, the focus on surface becomes unsatisfyingly superficial.
