Six Characters in Search of an Author
Gielgud
Riflemind
Trafalgar Studios
Pirandello, the master of pretentious bombast, is perhaps the most talent-free of all Nobel laureates. Here he is in the West End with one of his better-known experiments updated by Rupert Goold and his collaborator Ben Power. Playing games with the conventions of theatre was Pirandello’s main gift to the trade and his supporters will tell you this play ‘analyses the relationship between fiction and reality’. But there’s nothing as rigorous or coherent as an analysis here.
We start in the editing suite of a young female documentary-maker whose latest project has stalled. Enter a family of over-dressed show-offs who announce that they are characters abandoned by their author. Rather improbably, the film-maker agrees to chuck her dying documentary and follow their story instead. Certainly there’s something brilliant in this idea.
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