Not a lot happens, yet everything happens in Richard Nelson’s gift to his friend Paul Jesson of his seventy-minute, one-man play. In seven chapters, or cantos, it is Stanislavskian (think An Actor Prepares), Chekhovian (Nelson has “co-translated plays by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev and Bulgakov”), and Shakespeare is often quoted, naturally.
There you have the actor and the writer in one. The Actor, a facsimile of Jesson, has survived a couple of shocks: his own traumatic diagnosis and the heart attack death of his partner, Michael, fellow thespian, whom he had hoped would care for him through his ordeal.
It is a memory play, a gentle, collaborative rumination on life, Michael’s quirky ways and his own fragmented memories—interesting that the only date in any of Shakespeare’s plays is his birthday, he says, and he a Shakespearean actor. Jesson says he’s not that, in the programme notes, more a jobbing actor… a fine discrepancy.
We all look for comfort in what we know—an actor turns to warm reminiscences and anecdotes. Have you heard the one about Olivier frustrated and angry that he doesn't know how he gives a good performance? Yes, I have. He mentions doing Zoom with a Roger—Michell, probably—but how many friends are amalgams of the real, I’m curious to know? Fact and fiction have a habit of overlapping over time.
Imbuing real actualities with a tincture of the art of playwriting, Richard sends Paul on a slow, scenic route train from Waterloo to Devon, where he hopes to convalesce after an operation that took away half his upper jaw and palate. What a nightmare for an actor. But, he is well, if still grieving. Devon, the countryside, will, hopefully, revive him. He is ready.
There are more people there than he anticipated, but what a lucky man to have such accommodating friends. This is where sound designer Mike Walker comes into his own with noises off. With Rick Fisher’s mellow lighting and Rob Howell’s simple set—two chairs and a red drape—it could be a sitting for a painterly portrait, which in fact is what the play is. Though I keep thinking “arras”.
Under Clarissa Brown’s unobtrusive direction, the vastly experienced Jesson gently confides in us, draws our sympathy in towards him. Shakespearean asides, pertinent quotes (I remember turning to Hamlet in the first days of my grief) and warmth, this is a delicate play touching on mortality and the succour of the arts. If only the powers that be would listen to this.
Where would we be without the comforting arts? I’m envious: Chardin on an art trip to France, theatre in Palermo, Devon’s country houses, old library books, Kurt Weill’s “September Song”. “I sometimes feel I’m hanging on by my fingertips”… aren’t we all. “These memories are my fingertips”. To which we bring our own, each of us in the audience must be finding different connections.
“So much we don't know about what’s going on inside another person… Can’t know.” He quotes from The Winter’s Tale, in which he once played Camillo. And muses, “an ambassador for all those who can’t speak… Isn’t that just an actor?”
And I think of Macbeth’s "struts and frets his hour upon the stage" speech, which is too obvious to quote in this subtle play, leaving us to unpick the subtext. Indeed, Paul does not strut and fret; he seems to have made his peace. Not an easy thing to do.