After last week's short 2 minute, one line play, we have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, with this week's offering. 'Eclipse' is a 56 minute monologue. The longest and most detailed to date. We were also treated to some different camera angles, a more fitting and dressed set, and the perfect costume too. Perhaps the easing of lockdown restrictions has made the filming of this particular play a little easier. What wasn't easier however was the amount of acting and directing involved to bring this piece to performance level.
I've watched it twice now, and it is incredible. Not only is Philip Ridley a master story-teller (especially in matters macabre and offbeat) but a perfect mini-team of Wiebke Green (director) and actor Mike Evans made this long and static tale so eloquent and eminently watchable.
The whole starts with an ominous ticking - I thought at first perhaps a metronome, but changed my decision to a clock after hearing the piece, and it all ends with that same sound.. a very clever and almost imperceptible way of making his story just a small part of the 'continuum'.
The story - and oh boy what a captivating story it was too - concerned an ex-teacher who had lost his husband to 'the virus' and was taking up board and lodgings in an establishment on a street which looked like "the arse-end of the universe". Times have changed since 'the virus'. People are now living in the New World Order. The old one being before children and young people started going blind in their thousands and dying of 'the virus'; the old one was before the cull of the elderly, in fact anyone over 70; the biblical alloted time-span. People are now more feral, more hungry, times have changed.
He takes up residence in this boarding house, despite it being 'hexed'. The Roman Catholic church has always had a lot to answer for, and here we see that even in this New World Order, they are even more greedy and conniving, preying on the vulnerable etc. However, in order for the 'hex' to be removed from the property, the landlord enters into a contract with the Catholic Church for them to perform a temporary exorcism which will last for 70 days. He has to pay for this of course, and if, at the end of these 70 days he is unable to pay the total amount, plus a 50% surcharge!, he must forfeit the entire property and be left to the mercies of the angry and baying mob!
There's a deus ex machina awaiting for them though, and the macabre and chilling ending is quite fitting under the circumstances of the narrative.
Evans proved himself to be a consumate and sympathetic actor with a lovely and quite charming story-telling ability. The whole put me in mind of Roald Dahl's Tales Of The Unexpected, a most excellent series of adult Jackanory stories on our TVs some years' ago. Of course we never do get to know what 'the virus' was, although a very deliberate (or if accidental, then unintentionally clever) nod was given early on in the line, "bathed in a corona of candlelight".
Superbly tight direction (even down to the length of time it was possible to watch another man enjoy eating a biscuit!) and fine and nuanced acting. Absolutely brilliant! Bravo!
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 24/5/20
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