Six Characters in Search of an Author

Published Thursday 10 July 2008 at 11:45 by Mike Sell

Pirandello created a number of beginnings to his Six Characters in Search of an Author and this new contextualisation by Rupert Goold and Ben Power provides another. Whether they are successful in their mission is open to debate but perhaps the lines in the play “translations always seem to diminish the original” and “our translation is so free” provide an answer.

This new context is in the form of the six characters wandering into a TV documentary drama programme, which at times got in the way of the message. The concepts of reality and illusion are well developed but the play within a play to demonstrate the limit of theatrical illusion is not continuously developed.

Director Rupert Goold created a very modern but rather uneven piece. The end of the first act is the high point, for by then the company has found leadership through Ian McDiarmid, who plays the father, with equal self-righteousness and shame, with great realism. As leader of the group, he is at times challenged by Denise Gough, his step-daughter, who proves suitably feisty, vulnerable and disturbed. Eleanor David is a successful widow/mother who sees that she had lost control of her family, and her clearly alienated son is played by Dyfan Dwyfor. The TV team was originally led by Producer Numa Dumezweni but her grip on the team weakens as the play progresses.

New approaches can be exciting and this play produces some good moments, but overall Pirandello’s concepts seem to get rather lost.