Through the Leaves (Colchester)
We are in small-town Germany eavesdropping on the lives of two of its small-time inhabitants. Martha is a single woman with an established, inherited butchery business (specialising in offal). She keeps a dog and a diary and lives above the shop. When we meet her, she has just let Otto into her life. He’s a factory worker with an attitude to match. It’s not exactly a romantic partnership made in heaven.
The set shows us four spaces in Martha’s home – her bedroom, living-room, bathroom and the room behind the shop itself. Neither Martha nor Otto are ever in full command of any of these spaces, for he’s something much harder than chalk and she’s not altogether as soft as cheese. What each of them wants from the other is something which neither of them is actually capable of giving, for he wants a woman to be womanly and submissive (especially in sexual matters) and she wants a man who is gentle as well as strong, enjoying and gladly taking part in her out-of-work pursuits.
It’s very well acted with Evans balancing Martha’s weakness and occasional naïvety with the strength which has enabled her to make her way in a man’s world with a man’s trade. Griffin makes Otto understandable in his rough (very rough) masculinity which is basically the only asset he possesses which might give him status among his equals. Neither of them can really understand the other; the few times when they seem to be on the same wavelength are infinitesimal when measured against their hours of complete misunderstanding and mutual incomprehension.
Well acted and very well staged then, but not a play which sucks you in to the characters’ dilemmas. We’re on the outside, peering through the shutters, and the slither towards violent tragedy which at times hovers over the action remains in between the slats. When Otto leaves the shop and Martha makes her final diary entries, you have a sense that she has had a lucy escape. Another woman in another street may not be so lucky.
