Art Wednesday

Words by Stephen McEwen.

It is rather refreshing to see a new theatre, The Print Room in Notting Hill, open in such a climate of Spartan austerity; what is equally as stimulating and invigorating is its first production, ‘Fabrication.’

‘Fabrication’ (an adaptation of the original ‘Affabulazione’) forms part of the rather overlooked theatrical work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose oeuvre more widely spans poetry, novel, short story and essay. Published in 1969 and not performed until the year of his murder in 1975, the play, and The Print Room’s production thereof, will not disappoint those who are acquainted with the intellectually heavy controversy (and subsequent state censorship in Italy) of many of his works. Opening with a borghese Milanese industrialist awaking distressed from an ominous dream, what follows is an exploration of a homosexual deviancy from the Oedipal myth, as the man attempts to understand, and consequently expresses, his sexual desire for his adolescent son, with whom he and his wife are summering in the country. Undeniably an intellectually heavy production, the play swerves smoothly between issues of self-knowledge, narrative, familial bonds, and the ever unstable relationship between myth, reality and drama.

Mike Britton’s set design portrays well the condensed psychological difficulty of the situation, solidly and sparsely framed, but done so in a way which allows the fruitful complexity of the text to boil over and around it. Jasper Britton succeeds admirably in a role which occasionally borders on monologue, maintaining the performance with a strong consistence. Geraldine Alexander offers moments of comedy in the heavy drama, playing perfectly the cool, suave and somewhat glamorous mother figure, without making it too Absolutely Fabulous.

‘Fabrication’ is a striking production which shows engagingly the manifestation of a psyche in turmoil. Moments of comedy and familiarity between the characters, simultaneously remind us that the characters are after all family, as well as punctuating the conceptual rigour of the text with moments of light relief. The play is admittedly an intellectual exercise in theatre-going, yet instead of creating a form of academic masturbation, The Print Room has provided a play which is as solid in its production, as it is in its conceptual expression – indeed a play which occupies the mind for a long time after the curtain falls. When it would be so easy for a young theatre to create productions it thinks would make it established through any sort of happy-clappy commercial viability, it is admirable that such a striking text, supported by its performance has clambered to the stage – and at the end of the day, one cannot expect a ‘nice’ play with a ‘happy ending’ from a writer who once said ‘Hope is a thing invented by politicians to keep the electorate happy.’ A fresh, strong, and assertive choice for a theatre in its infancy, may it continue.

‘Fabrication’ runs at The Print Room from 12^th November – 4^th December.