Das Ding (New Diorama Theatre)
The UK premiere of Phliipp Löhle’s 2011 play (translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte) makes for pretty, sparky, entertaining theatre and it’s often quite amusing. It’s worrying, though, when a narrative is so convoluted that you need a programme note to disentangle it. Good theatre should stand on its own.
The five handed piece is, according to the programme, about a globalised world in which everything is interconnected. Thus the episodes about Thomas and Katrin’s crumbling marriage in Europe, the attempts by a Swiss aid worker to persuade an African to switch to sustainable cotton production, Romanian pig farmers and two Chinese men having problems with their soya bean business are all linked. And hooking them together is a travelling cotton boll aka the titular "thing" which takes various – rather confusing – forms.
Two features make the show noteworthy. One is the high quality of the acting. Ivy Corbin, lithe, pretty and charismatic as Katrin (and other doubled roles) in her neat striped dress is impressively assured and natural. Dylan Kennedy is compellingly watchable as her increasingly distraught husband Thomas and other ensemble parts. Multi-voiced Leo Wan is delightfully versatile initially as the chilly, imperious 16th century Portuguese king and later as a hilarious and manic Chinese farmer. Christopher Lane brings real depth to several roles including a volatile Romaniain pig farmer and Martins Imhangbe injects a sense of calm as the narrator – alongside other contrasting roles.
Second, warmest congratulations to stage manager Jade Gooch and her assistant Barbora Vacková. The complicated set consists of three units containing a large number of props and costumes, set out to look as if it is random and ramshackle. At the end almost everything is strewn across the stage and it must take a very organised brain and a great deal of time to set it up again for the next performance.
Not a show without merit, then, although it is flawed by its lack of narrative clarity and bitty episodic structure.
