The Aphorist, is a student written and performed play revolving around the deluded, miserable Harry (Matthew Monaghan), his suffocatingly pretentious friend Rudolph (Felix Legge) and Rudolph’s adoring girlfriend Cynthia (Agnes Meath Baker). The play charts the gradual emergence of the repressed feelings of Harry towards both Rudolph and Cynthia through Rudolph’s efforts to bring Harry along to one of his ‘shows’.
The character of Harry, at first glance, seems to invite a somewhat pitying empathy. Both the author and the actor do a fine job in creating a character that oozes resentment and a feeling of bitter under-appreciation. Yet there was a slightly disappointing lack of development. As a result, some of the dialogues later in the play were held back by the somewhat one dimensional nature of both the expression and the character. There are, after all, only so many ways of saying a resentful ‘no’.
While this problem did also feature in the portrayal of the other characters, this is one of the inevitable side effects of roles that are, in many ways, caricatures, and did not matter so much in the less pivotal roles. Other than this, however, the acting was rather good, especially the efforts of Felix Legge as Rudolph.
There may well be flaws in this production, but it is important to bear in mind that this play is the first attempt of a previously untried student writer. There is, after all, much to be commended; the dialogue, for the most part was well crafted, and largely devoid of the clumsy or incongruous lines that one might expect to crop up in a production of this nature. In addition to this, parts of the play are genuinely funny. It may not have had me choking on the floor, and the tendency to pander to the student predilection for incongruous swearing or absurd melodrama may not have been entirely absent, but there is a healthy dose of more subtle and well thought out comedy which is rather rare.
All in all, there is certainly plenty of potential on display here, both in the acting and in the writing, and I look forward to seeing strengths built upon by all members of the production in the final performance.
Three stars
The Aphorist is at the Burton Taylor Studio, 5th week, Tues-Sat, 9.30pm
