Review: PERPLEX at Bakehouse Theatre

Reviewed by Petra Schulenburg, Thursday 16th August 2018.

In the era of Trump, where the latest news feeds make us shake our heads and doubt our sanity in a world gone mad, Perplex, written by German absurdist playwright, Marius von Mayenburg, asks us to question our reality, and then turns our best effort on its head, causing us to laugh out loud at the outrageousness of it. This play is being presented by Joh Hartog Productions.

Nothing is what it seems when David and Clare, the performers, David Hirst and Clare Mansfield, use their own names in this work, return to their flat after being away on holiday. At first, it is just little things. Items of furniture have been slightly moved, the lights don't work, and there's a faint, but a pervading stench of rot about the place. Deftly, the script and the actors are off on shifting sands of roles and role reversals, a swap and change of ages, partners, and locations. Just when the audience thinks it may have the thread of the narrative in its grasp, it slips elusively away.

Perplex asks its actors to work hard, and they do, but it is fun, this game of 'catch me if you can' that they, and the script, play with us. Director, Joh Hartog, has cast a tight ensemble. All four performers, the other two being Lisa Harper Campbell and Eddie Morrison, inject enormous energy into their various roles, and it is their commitment that keeps the audience with them, that keeps us believing each outrageous change of fortune and circumstance.

Hartog has a particular interest in German plays and playwrights and is drawn to the fact that they are willing to take risks and "play more with structure and different forms of experiencing". His direction honours the pace and nature of the text and yet, importantly, he gives his actors permission to play. Hirst's comic timing and physicality, in particular, is a joy to watch. In a piece that, literally, questions whether there is, indeed, a 'director', or whether we are all alone in the universe, both a liberating and fearful prospect, Hartog guides his actors and his audience through the maze with insight and skill.

Perplex highlights the unreliability of everything around us, be it the physical world or our social, ethical, and political structures. All comes to naught under the weakest of strains and the slightest examination. In such a world "humour is the only antidote to what is a deeply disturbing reality". Make no bones about it, if you like your theatre 'straight', you are going to be challenged by Perplex, but you will also be amused and, perhaps, even a little enlightened.