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| Winter Solstice (Photo by Stephen Cummiskey) |
I first became aware of
Roland Schimmelpfennig’s work a few years ago when Actors Touring Company’s
production of the playwright’s The Golden Dragon transferred
from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to the Arcola. Translated by David
Tushingham and directed by Ramin Gray, the production made a huge impression,
its playful, eccentric form gradually revealing a deeply serious meditation on
the exploitations of globalisation and capitalism in the contemporary
metropolis. (Though with its “Vietnamese/Thai/Chinese” restaurant setting, and
an all-Caucasian cast playing characters of diverse ethnicities, ages and even
species, it’s likely that Gray’s production would be less warmly received in
our current "#StopYellowface" moment.)
ATC, Gray and Tushingham now
re-team on a more recent Schimmelpfennig play in a production at the Orange
Tree. Winter Solstice
initially sounds like a more conventional prospect than The Golden
Dragon: the piece focuses on a family gathering being disrupted by
the presence of an outsider. We meet Bettina and Albert - she’s a filmmaker and
he’s an academic - mid-Christmas Eve barney. The subject of their row is
Bettina’s mother Corrina, who, it transpires, has invited to the couple’s
apartment a stranger that she met on the train. Rudolph Meyer is a cultured
older gent who’s soon settled in and is charming the hosts with civilised chat
and classical music at the piano. But Albert gradually senses something
sinister under the guest’s rhetoric about chivalry, decency and community.
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| Nicolas Le Prevost in Winter Solstice (Photo by Stephen Cummiskey) |
Those familiar with Schimmelpfennig’s work won’t be surprised by the ways in which this familiar set-up is subverted through meta apparatus. For a start, stage directions are spoken by the cast, who slip between first- and third-person, at once inhabiting their characters’ experiences and standing outside of them. Gray’s production accentuates the play’s “baring the device” self-consciousness, with Lizzie Clachan supplying a rehearsal room set, and a creative approach to props (dig that Christmas tree!) throughout.
The mix of play, film, novel
and radio drama that Schimmelpfennig has fashioned has its drawbacks: we’re
told so much about the characters’ thoughts and feelings that some interpretive
space is removed. But the distanciation, treated by Gray with wit and lightness
of touch, can also be dazzlingly effective, allowing for fluid shifts in
perspective and time. (This is appropriate for a play that’s very much
concerned with the abiding presence of the past.) These shifts are negotiated
with consummate skill by the cast, with fine work from Kate Fahy as Corinna,
vacillating between mordant bitterness and hopeful flirtation; Laura Rogers as
the prickly Bettina; Dominic Rowan as the increasingly harried Albert; Milo
Twomey as an artist friend; and Nicholas Le Prevost as the insinuating, ambiguous
Rudolph.
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| Nicholas Le Prevost and Dominic Rowan in Winter Solstice |
The play has been interpreted
as a sharply topical piece: inspired by Schimmelpfennig’s concern
about the resurgence of far right movements, it’s been stated in no uncertain
terms that Rudolph represents the return of fascism, insidiously seducing its
way into a liberal household.
In performance, though, the
play feels like a much more slippery, psychological - and perhaps richer - creation
than this blunt interpretation suggests. Kindly grandfather figure, potential paramour,
Nazi… Rudolph gradually comes to seem like a projection of the other characters’ fantasises
or fears. The play pulls the rug from under us right up to the end, as Albert - agitated, pill-popping and influenced by his
fascism-related research - starts to
seem less and less like a reliable witness. As such, the production’s final
moments are perfectly judged, striking just the right balance between comfort and
chill. Obvious political readings of Winter Solstice are
certainly possible, but it’s as a deeply ambiguous portrait of the shifting
significance of a stranger that Schimmelpfennig’s haunting play resonates the
most.
Winter Solstice is booking until 11
February. Further information here.