As You Desire Me

If you happen to be going through an identity crisis, it’s probably desirable to steer clear of this head-spinning new version of Luigi Pirandello’s psycho-drama about an amnesiac 1930s Berlin cabaret singer in search of her true self who is pursued by louche stage door Johnnies every night and flaunts her body for a living but has become so confused after a vicious rape that she can’t work out who her real husband is. If that sounds a tad complex, it’s harder still trying to work out exactly who ‘L’Ignota’, the Deitrich-like entertainer with a permanent memory lapse, is supposed to be.

Typically, Pirandello ensures that things are deliberately confusing by getting you to see everyone on stage in a dozen different ways. An attempted anatomy of personal identity and a botched dissection of how the deceptive nature of perception can turn people you think you know into complete strangers, the play begins with a huge pop star projection of L’Ignota’s face, and then turns on Pirandello’s obsessive theme of the illusory nature of personality, but ends up blowing only a slight breeze through the windmills of your own mind.

Having set herself up with a dolt of a lover, ‘L’Ignota’ is suddenly faced with the news that her name is actually ‘Lucia’ and that she is in fact wife of an Italian aristocrat. From then on it’s confusion all the way as romantic dreams and brutal realities collide.
<>
But as someone who found recent revivals of Six Characters in Search of an Author, Absolutely! (perhaps) and Henry IV left a giant question mark over the theatrical relevance of Pirandello’s life-long quest to challenge the nature of reality, I’ve not changed my mind, even after watching Jonathan Kent’s meticulously presented 90-minute production of Hugh Whitemore’s new, easy-on-the-ear translation.

Paul Brown’s dazzling sets switch from evoking the decadence and danger of an Otto Dix painting to the shiny kitsch reality of an Italian mansion, but Pirandello’s drama-lite exploration of what today might be called false memory syndrome wouldn’t have much impact without touches of high-gloss acting from a top-notch cast. Returning to the Playhouse stage after her stunning performance in Three Sisters, Kristin Scott Thomas always looks alluring as the woman with a permanently split persona, while a chunkier-than-ever Bob Hoskins croaks menacingly enough as her bloated Berlin lover and Finbar Lynch and Margaret Tyzack are convincing as the two characters who always prefer to see the ‘real’ Lucia.

The actors work put plenty of passion into Pirandello’s mindgames, but without the heartbeat of humanity, this play will never live and breathe on stage.

– Roger Foss