Theatre review: Polar Bears
Should the Donmar Warehouse be worried? Normally it's standing room only there but this is the second production in a row where the unsold seats must have been well into the double figures (which doesn't sound much but in a 250-seat theatre it's a larger percentage of the auditorium.) While not the unmitigated disaster that was Serenading Louie, I can't blame the crowds for not knocking down the doors for Polar Bears either.
As a novelist Mark Haddon has specialised in stories about mental health in the amazing Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the so-so A Spot of Bother. This is also the case in Polar Bears, his first work for the stage. It deals with bipolar disorder so I was naturally interested to see how that would be portrayed onstage. The main focus of Haddon's play is actually the people affected by having a bipolar loved one, especially as seen through John (Richard Coyle,) whose wife Kay (Jodhi May) has the condition. The play starts well with a scene of surreal black comedy, and then tells the couple's story out of sequence - Kay's manic periods, her more level times, how John deals with her depressions; plus how they met, John's first meeting with Kay's mother (an underused Celia Imrie) and her brother (Paul Hilton,) the couple's first sexual encounter and, possibly, how their relationship ends. Along the way Kay appears to meet a Geordie version of Jesus Christ (David Leon,) and may or may not have become a celebrated children's author with a dark-fairytale parable about her mental condition.
As well as telling the story out of sequence, Haddon fills it with uncertainties, so it's not always clear which events have actually happened and which are in Kay's mind. But after a while this seemed to me to be just smoke and mirrors - the uniformly strong performances keep you involved for a long while but eventually they can't disguise that the non-linear storytelling covers a lack of focus. And while Kay's condition is clearly more severe than my own, I would have expected to find some hints of recognition in what I saw on stage, but I felt nothing of the sort. You could argue that we're meant to identify with the husband rather than the bipolar person herself, but the play's deliberately slippery grip on reality means it's hard not to see it as an extension of her experience. As well as a great cast Haddon is lucky to have the underrated Jamie Lloyd directing, and he, together with Soutra Gilmour's gorgeously creepy, grimy set, and Jon Clark's atmospheric lighting, give the play a dreamlike intensity, especially in a deceptively simple trick of askew beams of light coming through the floorboards, which makes for a nightmarish scene. But ultimately the only strong impressions I took from the play were visual ones, and I found myself wishing Lloyd, Gilmour and Clark's strong imagery had been put to use in a different play with more substance to it.
Polar Bears by Mark Haddon is booking until the 22nd of May at the Donmar Warehouse.
PS: My old gripe about the Donmar Warehouse's poor-value programmes is back with a vengeance here. £3 for a glorified cast list, the only additional material apart from rehearsal photos is an extract from Kay's children's book. Which seems like, oh well, at least they got Haddon to write a little extra bonus thingy to add to the play's world but it turns out no, the story is actually read out in the play so these are just a couple of paragraphs of script plonked into the programme and masquerading as added value.
As a novelist Mark Haddon has specialised in stories about mental health in the amazing Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the so-so A Spot of Bother. This is also the case in Polar Bears, his first work for the stage. It deals with bipolar disorder so I was naturally interested to see how that would be portrayed onstage. The main focus of Haddon's play is actually the people affected by having a bipolar loved one, especially as seen through John (Richard Coyle,) whose wife Kay (Jodhi May) has the condition. The play starts well with a scene of surreal black comedy, and then tells the couple's story out of sequence - Kay's manic periods, her more level times, how John deals with her depressions; plus how they met, John's first meeting with Kay's mother (an underused Celia Imrie) and her brother (Paul Hilton,) the couple's first sexual encounter and, possibly, how their relationship ends. Along the way Kay appears to meet a Geordie version of Jesus Christ (David Leon,) and may or may not have become a celebrated children's author with a dark-fairytale parable about her mental condition.
As well as telling the story out of sequence, Haddon fills it with uncertainties, so it's not always clear which events have actually happened and which are in Kay's mind. But after a while this seemed to me to be just smoke and mirrors - the uniformly strong performances keep you involved for a long while but eventually they can't disguise that the non-linear storytelling covers a lack of focus. And while Kay's condition is clearly more severe than my own, I would have expected to find some hints of recognition in what I saw on stage, but I felt nothing of the sort. You could argue that we're meant to identify with the husband rather than the bipolar person herself, but the play's deliberately slippery grip on reality means it's hard not to see it as an extension of her experience. As well as a great cast Haddon is lucky to have the underrated Jamie Lloyd directing, and he, together with Soutra Gilmour's gorgeously creepy, grimy set, and Jon Clark's atmospheric lighting, give the play a dreamlike intensity, especially in a deceptively simple trick of askew beams of light coming through the floorboards, which makes for a nightmarish scene. But ultimately the only strong impressions I took from the play were visual ones, and I found myself wishing Lloyd, Gilmour and Clark's strong imagery had been put to use in a different play with more substance to it.
Polar Bears by Mark Haddon is booking until the 22nd of May at the Donmar Warehouse.
PS: My old gripe about the Donmar Warehouse's poor-value programmes is back with a vengeance here. £3 for a glorified cast list, the only additional material apart from rehearsal photos is an extract from Kay's children's book. Which seems like, oh well, at least they got Haddon to write a little extra bonus thingy to add to the play's world but it turns out no, the story is actually read out in the play so these are just a couple of paragraphs of script plonked into the programme and masquerading as added value.