You would have to be gullible to accept the bizarre claim that Katherine Burger's Morphic Resonance and Kia Corthron's Splash Hatch on the E Going Down represent the best of new American theatre. These two plays, with a third due in March, have somehow been chosen by the Donmar's literary manager, Lucy Davies, for her American Imports Season. Neither generates much theatrical excitement. Neither deals with crucial issues in terms fresh or provocative. Both, despite the flashy modishness of their titles, are conventionally wrought. But Morphic Resonance resonates.
The plays have one thematic link. In each, a young lover is suddenly afflicted by mortal illness and quickly passes on. That's as far as the similarity goes. Miss Burger's Morphic Resonance, which I saw at a preview, does strike emotional pangs in James Kerr's ingenious production. It turns a wistful, sometimes witty and subtle gaze upon two well-heeled, thirtysomething heterosexual couples, teetering on the verge of love. The short, sharp scenes, staged on and around Tom Piper's distractingly opulent white stair-case and upper platform, observe the males' wooing processes and procedures as if scrutinising some exotic species at play.
Death is the constant skeleton at the feast of love. It unites Joanna Roth's petulant Cleome whose mother died giving birth to her, with Anastasia Hille as her best friend, Alice, suddenly beset by terminal cancer. An affecting Miss Hille scales the heights of pathos, facing up to death with stoic, strained nonchalance. In a turn too neat, Alice is linked with Cleome's daddy, the compelling Michael Culkin. That Nigel Lindsay's unyankish Jim should discover love for Alice as she declines, while Lloyd Owen's unhappy Wallace separates from Cleome, points no moral.
Miss Corthron's naive, beautifully acted play confuses radical indignation with radical drama. Her pregnant black heroine Thyme powerfully played by Shauna Shim talks like a book of statistics about injustice and abuse suffered by the Harlem poor. Hardly has she mentioned lead poisoning than her demolition-trade husband, an impressively stricken Chiwetel Ejiofor contracts the disease and slowly expires. Miss Corthron uses Thyme as mouthpiece to hector us about America's unjust society. It's more propaganda than theatre.
American Imports: Splash Hatch On The E Going Down
