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.
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