Review: THE MARRIAGE OF ALICE B. TOKLAS BY GERTRUDE STEIN, Jermyn Street Theatre

The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein, both written and directed by Edward Einhorn, makes its European premiere at Jermyn Street Theatre after a run in New York. Though wanting to capture the narcotic haze of Paris in the early 1920s, it is more a snooze-able feast than A Moveable Feast, tripping itself up on its own stylistic flourishes and undeveloped themes.

The play is self-aware, with each character declaring that they are only "pretending" to be that person. Except that the characters really are Stein and Toklas, just playing at being themselves and sometimes each other. Whilst Brechtian in spirt, it is not in execution, lacking any political bite or overarching intent; the play curtly reflects on the socio-political expectations and difficulties for lesbians in the 1920s, but it is too little too late.

The final scene sees Alyssa Simon's Alice B Toklas lament for the now dead Stein, played by a stern but sentimental Natasha Byrne. Given Simon's jovial optimism throughout the play, her sudden despondency is poignant. Not enough time is given to explore Toklas's emotional landscape. The play ends prematurely and the questions about Stein and Toklas's identity as outsiders, lesbians and lovers remains unresolved.

The overhasty ending stems from Einhorn's meandering script. Whilst it does reach an emotional conclusion, it has to trawl through scenes of wordplay, repetition, and inside jokes for those who have read Stein's work and are clued up to who's who in 1920s Bohemia. Sections where the play name-drops artists, poets, and writers becomes grating, with names mentioned to elicit a self-congratulatory smirk of recognition from someone in the audience rather than to develop the themes or narrative.

Talking of artists, both Kelly Burke as Picasso and Mark Huckett as Hemingway bring vibrancy and some physical comedy to their roles, but they are limited by the script that has them talking in caricatured soundbites. Hemingway is given line after line about hunting, matadors and sex as if the writer briefly skimmed over his Wikipedia biography before writing the play.

Like the questions about lesbianism, Stein's Jewishness lingers in the background of the play and goes unresolved. She is referred to as a "Jew", spoken with pejorative force by a significant number of the famous artists who Burke and Huckett impersonate. But this goes unaddressed. We know that so many writers and poets of the time were antisemitic, but without an angle, hopefully some form of condemnation of his attitudes, the presence of poets like Ezra Pound (alongside his attitudes) feels unnecessarily provocative, adding nothing to the overall story.

The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein is at Jermyn Street Theatre until 16 April

Photography by Ali Wright

To post a comment, you must register and login.