Danger: Memory!

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 1 July 2011

The bizarre road sign of a title heralds two short memory plays by Arthur Miller that suggest contrasting ways of dealing with the past: you simply forget what happened, or else you select what you remember.

The plays date from 1987, when they received mixed and baffled reviews in New York and a much kinder reception here in London, at Hampstead Theatre. Both are uncharacteristically opaque for Miller, but they do have a “late experimental” feel that chimed with the way he had recently compiled his extraordinary autobiography, Timebends.

In the first, I Can’t Remember Anything, two old friends, Leo (David Burke) and Leonora (Burke’s wife, Anna Calder-Marshall), discuss the retreating past in the light of the hazy present.

He is a retired engineer who is donating his organs to medical research: his brains for sweetbreads, he says, his liver with onions. She was married to his close friend for forty-five years. Her...

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 21 July 2011:

This is a pair of shorts by Arthur Miller which we haven't seen in London for 23 years, so how can a Miller fan resist. In I Can't Remember Anything, we're with neighbours Leo & Leonora. (It's only now, 12 hours later, that I'm pondering the significance of those names - two sides of the same character / personality?). They are in life's endgame, forever recalling the past, often disagreeing. Miller seems to be exploring how memories change depending on what we want to remember, our hindsight and disposition. He paints a rather poignant and moving picture of ageing which is beautifully staged and performed with great humanity by real husband-and-wife team David Burke and Anna Calder-Marshall. Clara is a detective story. We're in the apartment of Clara, who has been murdered, with her father and the detective who is questioning him. In a state of shock, her father is struggling to recall things. He has visions of his daughter the detective doesn't see and on one occasion they talk. Of course, it isn't really a detective story as we're again exploring issues of memory. Rolf Saxon as the father and Roger Sloman as the detective are both outstanding. I'd be lying if I said I understood exactly what Miller is trying to say, but it certainly makes you think. Whatever you decide, you have to accept that director Ed Viney and designer Anna Finch have given them impeccable productions with the help of a first class cast that the best theatres in the land would be proud to have. Another gold star for Jermyn Street Theatre....

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