When the Royal Court docket Theater in London introduced that it could be staging an adaptation of Maggie Nelsons’ prose memoir “Bluets,” my first response was head-scratching shock. This largely plotless ebook, wherein elliptical fragments of autobiography are interwoven with meditations on the cultural historical past of the colour blue and coalesce loosely across the theme of melancholy, does not precisely scream theater.
In Margaret Perry’s adaptation, directed by Katie Mitchell and proven till June 29, a trio of actors – Ben Whishaw, Emma D’Arcy and Kayla Meikle – recite excerpts from “Bluets” and symbolize darkish scenes of on a regular basis life; these are mixed with modern use of video know-how and melancholy music to generate a multi-sensory illustration of the narrator’s consciousness. It is an admirably bold enterprise, however the lack of narrative drive or tonal variation makes the expertise considerably cold.
The artists are positioned at three tables, every outfitted with a bottle of whiskey and a glass. Behind every of them, a tv display screen shows pre-recorded photographs of on a regular basis English areas: an odd purchasing avenue, a subway automobile, a municipal swimming pool. Every actor is filmed by a ball-shaped digicam, like a webcam, positioned on a tripod in entrance of them; this footage is immediately relayed to a big film display screen, the place it’s superimposed on photographs from the TVs under, in order that the actors and their units merge with eerie impact.
The darkish aesthetic and lugubrious soundscape match the somber timbre of the fabric as Nelson’s sentimental narrator recounts tidbits about his favourite colour – referencing Derek Jarman, Joni Mitchell and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – whereas intermittently meditating on his former accomplice, the whom she addresses in melancholy, reproachful tones, and recounting the struggles of an in depth pal who was paralyzed in an accident. (Video design is by Grant Gee and Ellie Thompson; sound is by Paul Clark). On stage and display screen, we see a whole lot of blue: blue props, blue costumes, and blue-centric music movies, together with one wherein a bower chook builds a nest out of items of blue particles.
First revealed in 2009, “Bluets” was reissued in 2017 following the success of Nelson’s equally hybrid work in 2015, “The Argonauts,” which heralded an editorial style for essay-memoirs that mixed environmental erudition with diaristic introspection. However the very high quality that some readers take pleasure in in these books—the lightness of the narrative, evoking a unfastened and free subjectivity—makes them uniquely unsuited to theater, which thrives on momentum, pressure, and battle.
These components are lacking right here, and other than a number of laughs – invariably occasioned by the narrator’s frank reminiscences about his intercourse life – there is not a lot pleasure both. Wishaw’s charming comedic demeanor injects a way of levity: over the previous 20 years he has performed a wide range of roles – from the poet John Keats for Paddington Bear – with a semi-abstract, ironic air of surprised bewilderment, which is once more on show right here. D’Arcy and Meikle’s extra paradoxically deadpan deliveries are maybe more true to the sardonic spirit of Nelson’s ebook.
The true star is the camerawork, which is at instances impressively disconcerting. Once in a while an actor lays his head on a pillow and the lighting in his a part of the stage is adjusted for night time; the footage transmitted to the large display screen from the digicam in entrance of them doesn’t admit even the slightest ray of sunshine, so the picture of the sleeping calm seems surprisingly hermetic, as if it couldn’t have been filmed on this busy stage.
The Royal Court docket has lengthy had a popularity for taking dangers, and this type of vibration-based theater – wherein texture moderately than motion is the driving drive – is uncommon in Britain’s main theaters, though it’s extra widespread in France and Germany. , the place Mitchell’s work is widespread. If this manufacturing drags a bit, it is as a result of the presence of a narrator’s voice requires charisma, and Nelson’s literary achievement in “Bluets,” with its cautious choice of cultural curiosities, was largely curatorial: it lacks the intelligence and brightness of a raconteus.
But as a downbeat portrait of banal melancholy blended with obsessive mania, Mitchell’s adaptation of “Bluets” is a reliable realization of Nelson’s textual content. This will lead us to contemplate what constitutes success in such an endeavor and to consider the distinction between an homage and an adaptation that may stand alone. In the event you didn’t already know “Bluets” (the ebook) and went to see “Bluets” (the play), would it not captivate you? I doubt it.
