Brain-storming in a world without stories
The Antipodes National Theatre ★★★★★
What would a world that had run out of stories be like? How would it be if the seemingly infinite flow of tales that gush from the font of ancient myth and legend, and that feed our discourse with stories true or imagined, were to run dry?
In Annie Baker’s latest play it is a problem encountered by a group of thinkers and creatives employed to conjure up a story for a corporation. With their genial, guru-like employer at the head of the table, the meeting is a brain-storming session for the participants to relate personal experience in the hope that out of their confessions an idea is born to be converted into another great moneymaking venture for the company.
It is never clear exactly what it is that company makes. But the culture depicted is completely convincing. A mini-mountain of mineral water bottles occupies one corner of the meeting room. At the head of the massive oval table around which everyone sits is Conleth Hill’s whitehaired Sandy, the leader of the group, who describes himself as the nicest possible boss. Yet there is something scary behind his cheery, avuncular persona.
In one sense, Baker’s play, which the Pulitzer-winning American dramatist co-directs with Chloe Lamford, is a study of manufactured creativity. This, we can infer, is the process by which the sincerity of large companies is faked. But no less fascinating is the way in which Baker continues to expand what a stage play can be.
Her previous National Theatre show John had at its centre the kind of dysfunctional couple — the Jewish
Elias and the non-Jewish Jenny — that could be the core of many a relationship play. But Baker’s interest is always much bigger than just the drama generated by people in conflict. As high-falutin as this sounds, it’s as if through the people in her plays she reveals a particular juncture in the evolution of their species. And yet it’s all done with stealth rather than heightened drama, though often there is some of that, too. Human behaviour is conveyed by showing much of what goes on when nothing particularly happens. It is as if Baker sees what is dramatic in the material that others assume is boring.
For this work, outside the airconditioned safety in which it is set, news filters in of a destructive storm raging outside. There is a sense that the bedrock of certainty on which civilisation is built is becoming unstable. That the stories and the physical world are linked. Meanwhile, Sandy’s team of seven strain to find a narrative to satisfy their creepily kind employers.
The acting is impeccable. Sinead Matthews is (literally) outstanding as the only woman in the team who is silently judged by her male colleagues.
As a colleague said on the night I caught up with this play, he has never known a Baker play not to have walkouts. And, sure enough, the uncompromisingly conveyed depiction of inertia here proved too much for some members of the audience, even with a relatively quick production of two uninterrupted hours. Their loss.
Somebody once described The Smiths as a band so original, it was impossible to identify the influences that made their music possible. Well, Baker is a bit like that. Those who