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Zak Ford-Williams as Joseph Carey Merrick. Pictures: Marc Brenner The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man Coventry Belgrade ***** Forty three
years ago, David Lynch’s Oscar-nominated film
The Elephant Man
was launched, starring John Hurt as
the appallingly disfigured Joseph Carey Merrick (1862-90) and Anthony
Hopkins as the surgeon who seeks to restore dignity and self-respect to
a hapless young man trapped in his own distorted skin, and mocked by
freak show or circus audiences as a repulsive, ugly monster. Hurt’s performance was simply stupendous. How
dare anyone set out to mount a stage play that comes remotely near the
hitherto unmatched excellence of that landmark movie account of
Merrick’s sufferings? Well, Coventry audiences have just found out.
Scriptwriter Tom Wright and director Stephen Bailey have certainly done
so here. Toured to the Belgrade, Nottingham Playhouse’s The Real and
Imagined History of the Elephant Man is one of the best, perhaps
the best, staging of any play I have seen in 2023. It’s in a class of its own. Indeed one of the
finest, most moving stageworks the supremely inventive Nottingham
company has produced during the whole time I have been reviewing them
(originally, for The Independent). The at times surreal, symbolic set and lighting
effects (Simon Kenny and Jai Morjaria) had a haunting impact right from
the start. When that changes latterly to a (mental) hospital location,
the Chelsea Royal Infirmary, the grimness of the grey-greens and
beige-browns hammer home the awfulness of it all: the baldness,
emptiness and oppressiveness of the institutional. We do not meet other patients, or subjects of
investigation, but we can imagine them. As for prodding our
imaginations, huge sprouting gourds ‘of human substance’, presumably
securing a fair number of ‘scrotal sacs’, give one a feel for the
dissection-chamber. The half-dozen strong cast is excellent in every
possible respect, as indeed is Nicola T. Chang’s sensitive,
well-conceived, sometimes almost francophone musical score. An
astounding triumph for Killian Thomas Lefevre, just four years out of
drama school (Guildford) and already renowned for the role of ‘Tink’ in
the rock musical Bat Out Of Hell (the music of Meatloaf), plays a
literal flood of roles, including as narrator, interacter, lecturer, and
as the chief medic (the Hopkins role) whose sympathetic commitment to
helping – salvaging and salving – his willing patient is deeply
affecting.
Lefevre’s speaking is stunning, admirably strong
and assured, exceptional, a model of stagecraft: his authoritative
performance acts as the glue which holds the parts of this rich and
finely structured narrative together. Indeed, the articulation of all
the ancillary cast (Daneka Etchells, magnificent; Nadia Nadarajah,
immensely appealing; Tim Pritchett, commanding, and as Joseph’s father
particularly first-rate in an extended exchange with the boy; and the
excellent Rose Wardlaw standing in for Annabelle Davis) was impossible
to fault. Their immersion in text and story alike was impressive at
every turn. Thanks to them, there was not a single second when this
gripping theatrical adventure flagged. The standard was A1 at every
turn. But what lifted this play adaptation by Tom
Wright to the very heights of theatrical achievement was young Zak
Ford-Williams’ treatment of the central role of Merrick himself: broadly
the same age – still in his twenties - as the actor himself (and Lefevre
too). One of the most astonishing, awe-inspiring performances by a young
actor I have seen – ever. Merrick is not – the point is made very clear –
mentally deficient. In fact he is very bright. We hear him speaking
perfectly normally early on, but once he is turned - cruelly corrupted -
into a humiliating circus act, for a long time he does not speak. He
keeps himself to himself. For fear of being further mocked. Only
latterly does one of the nurses (Agnes - Nurse Willison, Nadia Nadarajah)
perceive that his silence is self-imposed, and can be rectified simply
by encouragement. His intelligence and entrancing vocabulary – of almost
academic quality - are revealed in the second half; and as they emerge,
so are Joseph’s remarkable sensitivity, and kindness to others, and
grasp of complex social and moral issues, revealed. A revelation like no other, although one is reminded of those small raw ‘wild’ boys, discovered lost in the forests of 19th century France or Germany who are nursed back to interact with humanity. If Stephen Bailey’s direction – endlessly astute,
insighted, tight, every tiny detail inventively thought through – is
what gives this undoubted masterpiece its fire and explosive power even
when it is (so often) restrained, reflective, tender and touching, it is
his handling of the ‘abused’ ‘victim’ (though the text is far subtler
than to deploy modern clichés) which cries
aloud the phenomenal qualities of director and actor alike. John Hurt nearly gained a leading actor Oscar for
his portrayal of an (accurately) horrendously skull-disfigured yet
searingly tender-hearted Merrick. If an Oscar’s not viable, Zak Ford-Williams deserves at least a UK Theatre Award for his creation here. Warmth, kindness, common decency, dignity,
attentiveness, a strong sense of respect apart, perhaps the most
important thing about Zak as Merrick is that he is not cowed, not
diminished, not crushed by his experiences. He stands up for himself,
fights his corner, doesn’t suffer fools lightly. We weep for him, but we
don’t have to. He asks questions of his supposed mentors, but often has
the answers already. So far from being stupid, he is wise. Puzzled, but
perceptive. ‘A body at war with itself’, but a survivor.
ne way Zac and Stephen get this across is
by much superb pacing. While pauses and silences and hesitations are
used to beautiful effect, increasingly Joseph replies to an interlocutor
with a quickfire response: in musical terms, an attacca; a kind
of follow-on enjambement. Nurse: ‘that I am… unhappy.’ Merrick
(instantly): ARE you unhappy? Another thing Wright’s script uses to give
Merrick character is a remarkable flow of poetry early on. His use of
language, of entrancing sounds and images, is truly beautiful.
Visionary. He may describe himself as a pachyderm, but he’s the sweetest
one ever. Philosophy abounds. It’s he who is teaching us. ‘We must be in
this world, but not of it’; ‘You make an art form out of loneliness’;
‘They say you will just be going on being yourself for ever.’ ‘I am not
a freak…to be kept in a cage. I am a new species.’ But it’s the moves with which Ford-Williams
expresses the most. It’s they that are the clue both to his suffering
and to his extraordinary buoyancy and willpower, tenacity, guts and
stamina to overcome it. He brings in his train a range of moves more
varied than a Sher or Olivier. He is a maze of congenital deficiencies.
He squirms, arches, jerks, shivers, flails, drops one shoulder, droops
fingers and wrists (one-sided: rarely both at the same time); limps,
feet differently inturned; hunched, scrunched, angled, awkward; gasping,
or – conversely – intentionally dormant. John Hurt relies on the massive
protuberance and the beautiful passivity of Merrick’s personality and
speaking. Here there is, if anything, wider, richer variety. The growth, we learn, started ‘when I was a lad’.
At one point he is a destitute small child, then a questing boy in
class: exiled but not alienated. Hauls himself along the floor
like a python. As the play progresses, Zac’s Joseph, indeed the play as
a whole, reveals its true credentials. This is wonderful Czech-German
Expressionist theatre of the early 1900s. Plays about the put-upon
‘little man’, who shakes off his shackles, abjures authority - starchy,
knowing medics (‘We could saw off the bone spurs’. ‘Break and reset the
feet, perhaps’) not least, but bank managers, judges or politicians too
- and sets out (sometimes literally) to create a new existence. To
redefine himself. There’s a telling sequence from the enchanting
Nurse Willison: ‘We all thought his stench was one of the symptoms. But
he doesn’t stink at all. It’s just that no one gave him a wash.’ And her
conclusion: ‘There’s a lot less wrong with you than those upstairs
think.’ Herein the whole point: that of the play, the film, the original
Joseph (‘I have been through hell’) is as much a normal human being as
anyone else. When the nurse goes further, by – quite quickly,
such is her skill and his acumen - getting him talking, the flow is
astounding, and its contribution to our empathy with him, thanks to the
outstanding script, is vast: ‘You can rely on my discretion’; ‘I do not
know if I have been mad or sane’; ‘This is one of the things I have in
abundance’; ‘After a fashion…’. ‘Epitome’; ‘antithesis’; ‘symbiosis’,
‘celestial’. Is there no limit to this man’s marvellous command of
English? Or his conceptual command: ‘Do you think it is possible to be
both human and something else?’ ‘The honour is mine, Miss Fordham’ (Rose Wardlaw);
‘I am in your hands’; ‘I am plastic, Mrs. Highfield’ (Daneka Etchells)…
I have no real shape.’ Plus he watches, listens, attends: intensely.
Comprehends. He is the perfect pupil. Utterly self-aware. ‘I am not some crustacean
that can move from shell to shell. I am myself.’ ‘My body is not
predictable; tomorrow it may become something else’. And a nice one: ‘I
have spent many a tedious hour onstage’. I wonder how many of today’s or
yesterday’s actors have felt that, on the touring circuit, six
performances a week, sometimes for a pittance. And perhaps it’s when he becomes enraptured: when
his whole face and body language exudes joy, that we are able to
relish Merrick above all. His childlike excitement at some intellectual
discovery is where Zak Ford-Williams in this stupendous stage display
gives us pure enchantment and uplift. I haven’t seen a tour-de-force
like his here even on Britain’s greatest stages. What a find he is. Roderic Dunnett 26-10-23 |
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