Strange fish, Peter Handke. His 1992 play The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other is wordless and consists of semi-amusing visual skits. In James Macdonald’s production these mime acts are played out in an unnamed city that looks as if it’s been moulded from dough by a chimpanzee. It’s like an early rehearsal for a hit-and-miss silent comedy. Tons of mad ideas and a failure rate of 98 per cent. I found myself drifting pleasantly towards sleep and I became vaguely aware of people around me coughing. How would the actors respond? Spectators don’t cough because they’ve got a cough. They cough because they’re dissatisfied. It’s booing without the bad manners. Decent actors are ever alert to the sound, they know the danger it represents and they’re ready to react, to improvise, to make some decisive effort to entice the crowd back from the Beachy Head of boredom. Here no one bothered, they just meandered on through their repertoire of tepid gags. At the curtain call the cast came out to be clapped. Blimey. Twenty-seven actors to make all this dullness? Three could have done the job handsomely. At moments like this the National seems like a fringe venue run by a whimsical billionaire. Which is exactly what it ought to be, of course, and though I judged this show a tedious error the Lyttelton was virtually sold out.
A perfect play is bound to yield imperfections but there were more than I’d bargained for in Peter Gill’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
Harry Hadden-Paton seems ill at ease playing the debonair Jack but he’s a lot better than William Ellis. His Algy is a cold suave rich-kid, a maid-tupping rotter rather than a loveable dandy. The accent troubles him too.
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