There Are Two Wars

Back at the Paintframe of the National Theatre last night with Suave Tom to see the second in their double feature of two plays - Nightwatchman by Prasanna Puwanarajah and There Is A War by Tom Basden. We were underwhelmed.

Nightwatchman is a one-woman play performed by Stephanie Street (Puwanarajah, incidentally, is of the male variety), with Abirami as a member of the England cricket team (female variety) practising in the nets the night before a test match with Sri Lanka. Piquancy is added by the fact that Abirami is a Tamil who comes from a family where superficial unity masks deep divisions over support for the Tamil Tigers - the terrorists / freedom fighters who until last year were fighting the majority Sinhalese for control of the north of the island. The set and special effects (throughout the play Abirami was batting imaginary balls bowled by an invisible machine) were excellent and Street herself played the part with energy and authority. My only quibble was the play, which I found a little formulaic and which left some questions about Abirami's unseen family hanging in the air. Nevertheless, for a debut, Nightwatchman was impressive and if Puwanarajah can break out into more universal themes, he should one day be presented on one of the National's main stages.

On the other hand, universality is not a guarantee of a great play, as Tom Basden's There Is A War, the second offering of the evening, confirmed. In this black comedy, a pointless civil war between identical Blues and Greys has devastated an imaginary country-that-could-be-the-UK, with all the confusion and violence and death and misunderstandings and gore and humour that war and plays about war can throw up. The action is fast and furious, the acting (almost 20 players) excellent and the laughter frequent. The problem is the play's lack of internal logic; the giant roll of sellotape, old-fashioned matchboxes and abandoned drinks carton out of which appear severed hands and heads at first suggest toy soldiers, but that idea is never developed. Other moments are updates of Oh, What A Lovely War! There are some imaginative scenes - the routine torture is one and the Welsh protesters is another - but there is no coherence. (Yes, you can make the point that there is no coherence in war, but we are not fighting, we are playwatching; to constantly try and make sense of what you are watching is frustrating and detracts from the overall experience.) And then, at the point where the play should have stopped - the ending would have been unsatisfactory but we had had enough of the comedy and noise - we get another long scene that hammers home the point that had already been made: war is destructive and absurd.

Despite their drawbacks, both plays were an actor's dream. Suave Tom was dismissive of Stephanie Street, saying that he thought she was doing no more than acting herself. But even acting oneself in front of an audience, for an hour, alone, requires considerable stamina and - of course - talent. The other actors had to go to the opposite extreme in playing caricatures of soldiers and civilians and caricatures are relatively fun and easy. (At least I assume that for most of them it was an opposite extreme, although in Trevor Cooper's case, an aging South London hard case appears almost natural.) Each of them played to perfection.

Back home to an email from Sarah telling me that they had decided not to use me for the part of the policeman in her upcoming student film (I knew that already) but she was keeping me in mind for future productions. Considering that she didn't have to be that polite, I think I believe her...