A teenage couple once declared eternal love for each other, and 24 years later the woman appears on the man’s doorstep demanding that he keep his promise. Part black comedy, part Fatal Attraction-style horror tale, Roland Schimmelpfennig’s drama shows the effect of this visitor on the man and his wife while at the same time reminding us of the intensity and impermanence of young love through the experience of the man’s son and his girlfriend.
The play is structured in a series of brief scenes out of chronological order so that, for example, an encounter will take on new meanings when we later see the scene that preceded it in time. Several scenes are played more than once, but beginning a few moments earlier or running on a few moments after they ended the first time. Other times we see the beginning and end of an encounter but only later see what came in between. Projected signs keep us informed as to where we are in the chronology.
This device not only communicates the disorientation the visitor causes but establishes an ironic distance that supports the darkly comic tone. The effect backfires a bit when things move unexpectedly in the direction of the Grand Guignol and the audience isn’t sure whether to laugh at the horrors.
Helen Baxendale plays the intruder with the preternatural calm and assurance of the mad, though this does not quite prepare us for the lengths to which she ultimately goes. Nigel Lindsay as the husband is a man stunned from the start and never quite in control afterwards, while Saskia Reeves makes the wife quicker to recover her equilibrium and gritty determination to fight.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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