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The Dying of Today

Published Monday 27 October 2008 at 10:40 by Natasha Tripney

A man walks into a barber’s shop. Not, in this case, the set up of a joke, but the start of Howard Barker’s latest play, presented in the intimate surroundings of the Arcola’s Studio 2. Staged by Barker’s own Wrestling School company, the play is inspired by Thuclydides’ account of the destruction of the Sicilian expedition in BC413. Duncan Bell plays the Visitor, a bearer of bad news. We know this because he talks to the barber at length at about the impact of bad news, about the way that people handle devastating information.

Eventually the Barber, played by George Irving, is able to say his piece. He guesses, correctly, that his son has been killed, that all the sons of the city have been wiped out and the unprotected populace faces enslavement. Barker’s play has an engaging rhythmic quality - there is something hypnotic about these two men talking as the streets outside fill with wails of the bereaved. But while the way in which Bell’s Visitor views tragedy with something akin to glee and hunger is truly unnerving, the play as a whole lacks emotional weight and feels distant, surface-skimming, even when Irving sets about destroying his shop in despair.

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