There’s something pretty Oxfordy about roman numerals in a title. Just like there’s something pretty Oxfordy about a “devised play”; a production that fights back against the notion that a script-writer “is God”, and that sees itself as on the edgy side of modernism. “We don’t want to do a play that’s just people round the table having troubles”, co-director Thomas Bailey tells me.
But the first scene I’m shown is precisely that. Mother (Lamorna Ash) and father (Sam Ward) replicate the empty routine of table conversation between a married couple, finishing each other’s sentences with a heavy clunk of the cutlery and frozen turn of the head. Then repeat. The second time round the scene is less interesting but more disconcerting – I think I’m finally experiencing the theatrical cliché of “alienation”, bandied around so much but rarely experienced. On the third time round , the sentence-finishing gets confused. “Have you cooked the…” “kids?” I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or not. It’s either very profound, or very funny.
Or both. The other director, Tommo Folwer, assures me that for all its preoccupation with “fear”, these devised scenes also make up a comedy. They show me a scene which takes place inside the mother’s head, in which she goes to a family planning clinic having decided that she wants to “get rid” of her son. How long has it been? 16. Weeks? Years. “I’ll put him down as a ‘severe irritation’ Madam”.
I’m privy to three or four excellent scenes but remain unsure how the whole thing will hang together. The acting is undeniably excellent – apparently the cast spent vast amounts of time acting one another so it’s no wonder they’re all marvellously in sync. A moment of improvisation, in which the mother interrupts her son mid-flow on his vivid but debauched virtual life, brings a new fragility to the stage that I’m not sure is ideal just a week before the show opens. The team don’t seem fazed; “this is a classic rehearsal in that these two have never done this before”.
And how does a series of fragmented scenes come to an end? Thomas Bailey explains that his devised play can never really come to any kind of conclusion, because that would counteract the ultimate message of production: “we’re all essentially terrified of chaos”. I’m still pondering this statement as I leave, and the cast return to one of the calmest and most focused rehearsals I’ve ever seen.
