The Stage

The Moon the Moon

Published Friday 20 March 2009 at 11:20 by Pat Ashworth

There’s no denying the passing beauty of The Moon The Moon or its power to disturb. It’s clearly about release from the very depths of grief and overwhelming loss. But it remains an enigma, the sort of outcome you continue to puzzle over in a rather vexed way as you return home.

The Man (Jon Spooner) appears to be drawn back from the brink of suicide by a passing Good Samaritan on the quayside, but ends up shackled to the wall in a pub cellar by The Older Man and The Young Woman. They practise a studied brutality that comes in crescendos of hateful language and physical violence and provokes a constantly shifting dynamic between victim and captors.

In contrast, there’s the beautiful, languorous, mocking figure of the Moon, an auburn-haired spirit presence who can penetrate the bleak concrete walls of the man’s dungeon or who poses and drapes herself like Titania within the perfect circle of the moon. It’s an engaging, lilting performance from Helen Cassidy, and has a slow mischief about it that casts radiance in a dark play.

It becomes completely surreal in an episode so gruesome as to be laugh-aloud comic. That is when it topples, and even the things that felt real before become questionable. It might be a dream or it might be a nightmare. It might be about death or it might be about resurrection. All four actors deliver flawless performances, though, on a set that holds its own surprises.