Review: BREAK OF NOON, Finborough Theatre

A few years ago, in the heat and humidity of Kowloon, I heard someone described as "filth". "Filth?" I said, feeling the word a little strong for a conversation over gin and tonics. "No, F.I.L.T.H. Failed In London, Try Hong Kong".

De Ciz is one such chancer, sailing off from Marseilles to make money in the scams of the early 20th century, as the European footholds in China began to crumble and industrialisation sped forward. His wife, the alluring, Ysé, has given him children, but the couple, never close, are drifting apart.

Matters are complicated further by Ysé's ex-lover Amalric, another chancer, finding a berth on the same steamer as the two still harbour amorous thoughts a decade on from their tryst. But Mesa, a Chinese official as naive in matters of the heart as he is experienced in business, is infatuated by Ysé - and she soon comes round to realising where her best interests lie.

Paul Claudel's play is somewhat autobiographical - you hardly need the programme notes for that - and it's very, very French. The words just keep coming, often in long speeches that must have stretched the actors' memories - and undoubtedly stretch the audience's concentration.

The actors bravely see it out. Under David Furlong's direction, they're often required to stand more or less still as they soliloquise, the conversations more like formal debates with views presented in strict order with an overarching formality that is intended, but nevertheless, quite hard work.

Elizabeth Boag anchors the narrative as the temptress Ysé, but she never quite captures the erotic charge the part needs - there's a hint that Ysé is Spanish and a little "Carmen" in the role would make the ménage-a-quatre more credible. Like all the characters, she is just too static on stage.

David Durham gets the short straw as the cuckold De Ciz, bizarrely underwritten in a play that overflows with words. He's never asked to do more than caricature a French Del Boy and I'm sure I was not the only one perplexed by how he ever snared the vamp Ysé.

Connor Williams gives Amalric a Jack-the-Laddish charm and makes it clear that he both wants Ysé and that he's the kind of man who gets what he wants, less through charm and more through persistence. Like De Ciz, we've seen him before countless times.

Mesa is the most interesting of the quartet and his combination of boyish naivety in matters of the heart and sophistication in matters of the head is a real challenge for Matt Lim. He does what he can, coming into his own in the shattering aftermath of rebellion, but he looks about a generation younger than everyone else and it's very hard to invest his complex character with credibility as a result - there's no sense of years of celibacy overflowing in a sexual epiphany, as he looks too young to have built up that level of frustration. There's a lot of spiritual mumbo-jumbo that Lim intones and that is hard to follow too.

"Break of Noon" is the kind of niche revival that this theatre has done well in the past and, given the raw material (Jonathan Griffin and Susannah York's translation clunks along at times), this might be all we can ask of it in 2018. The question is whether the play is strong enough as a drama or important enough as a commentary on colonialism, on feminism or on theatre to warrant its resurrection 112 years on. Given this evidence, probably not.

Break of Noon continues at the Finborough Theatre until 9 June.

Photo Hannan Images.

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