{"id":1445,"date":"2017-10-10T15:57:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T15:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1445"},"modified":"2017-10-10T15:57:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T15:57:40","slug":"lies-damnable-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2017\/10\/lies-damnable-uncertainty.html","title":{"rendered":"Lies & Damnable Uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Samantha Bond with Louis XVI chair just visible.
Photograph: Manuel Hartman<\/p><\/div>\n

Two new London theatre productions, The Lie<\/em> and Heisenberg\u2019s Uncertainty Principle<\/em>, seem to have little in common, save that they are both topics discussed by philosophers. But director Lindsay Posner\u2019s The Lie <\/em>by Florian Zeller, in a zippy translation and adaptation by Christopher Hampton (at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 18 November), and Heisenberg\u2019s Uncertainty Principle<\/em> (at Wyndham\u2019s Theatre) by Simon Stephens, directed by Marianne Elliott, are both brief (one and one-half hours or so), without an interval, and have very small casts. The Lie<\/em> is a four-hander, Heisenberg\u2019s Uncertainty Principle <\/em>a two-hander.<\/em><\/p>\n

There, any resemblance ends.<\/p>\n

In Anna Fleischle\u2019s set for The Lie<\/em>, a Paris apartment in exquisite good taste (contemporary furniture except for the single, show-off Louis XVI chair), Alice (the stunning, crisp and cool Samantha Bond) and Paul (the intelligence-exuding Alexander Hanson) are expecting dinner guests, Paul\u2019s best friend, Michel (Tony Gardner, who manages to impart just enough sleaze to the role) and his partner, Laurence (Alexandra Gilbreath, who gives the feeling she\u2019s married beneath her).<\/p>\n

The problem is framed by Alice revealing to Paul that she has seen his friend, Michel, in a passionate embrace with a woman, not Laurence, in the street. Should she tell the truth to Laurence, rather than busy herself cooking the rabbit intended for their dinner? Paul says no, lying is an act of friendship. So far, so philosophical; but this is only the first revelation of adultery \u2013 there are three more to come, each in its very logical order, and the dialogue unfolds like a well-constructed syllogism. It\u2019s French bedroom farce conducted in the tradition of English drawing-room comedy, and very good it is, too, especially in Hampton\u2019s precise, wistful\/funny lines.<\/p>\n

Heisenberg\u2019s Uncertainty Principle<\/em> is not a philosophical play, or even a play about science, more\u2019s the pity. We all know (from Michael Frayn\u2019s great Copenhagen<\/em>, in which the German physicist is a character) that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that the more precise the measurement of the position of a small particle, the more imprecision is introduced into measuring its velocity \u2013 this means that the observer is influencing the behaviour of the thing observed. But this only applies on the microscopic \u2013 quantum \u2013 level; on the macroscopic, everyday level, probability applies, and risk, reward and behaviour can be predicted, with varying degrees of accuracy, in the usual ways.<\/p>\n

In other words, Heisenberg\u2019s Uncertainty Principle has Sweet Fanny Adams to do with this play, which went down a bomb in America \u2013 though Marianne Elliott\u2019s gorgeous, lavishly designed (by Bunny Christie) and lit (by Paule Constable) London production is more of a stink bomb.<\/p>\n

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Heisenberg
The Uncertainty Principle
Wyndhams Theatre London
Anne-Marie Duff – Georgie Burns
Kenneth Cranham – Alex Priest<\/p><\/div>\n

photograph by Brinkhoff\/M\u00f6genburg<\/p><\/div>\n

Against beautiful backdrop abstract projections that refer more to Mark Rothko than to James Turrell, Anne-Marie Duff, playing Georgie Burns, a ditsy 40-something American, astonishes Kenneth Cranham, playing Alex Priest, a 75-year-old, buttoned-up London butcher, by kissing the back of his neck as he is sitting, harmlessly and aimlessly, on a bench on St Pancras Station. Georgie describes herself sequentially as an assassin, a waitress, an assistant in a primary school, and a mother who has lost (or misplaced, it\u2019s unclear) a teen-aged son in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

They make a deeply unlikely couple, but who cares? This pair of fine actors is wasted, as the only real skills they are called upon to display are the ability 1) to be in exactly the right as tables, benches and a bed rise from under the stage and 2) to dress and undress without doing up his beltbuckle, or unzipping her clothing. The dialogue is vacuous, save for a single speech given to the marvellous Cranham, in which he lists every musical rubric he can think of, from Garage and Grime to opera. \u00a0I suppose it\u2019s just possible that Georgia, who says \u201cfuck\u201d a lot, is supposed to have mild Tourette\u2019s Syndrome. Or maybe she\u2019s just a free spirit in a confining world. I found it impossible to care.<\/p>\n

On opening night, we critics could scarcely move for the photographers who were snapping Slebs I\u2019m too old or indifferent to be able to identify \u2013 so this play is obviously a big deal. It didn\u2019t help that neither my companion nor I could hear Ms Duff\u2019s words when she turned her head to address Mr Cranham, and that many of these lost words contained the punch lines – to judge from the titters of the audience (except for the person in the seat to my right, who got up and left early on). This inaudibility might well be an amplification problem, and no fault of Ms Duff.<\/p>\n

It is almost unbelievable that this play was written by the same Simon Stephens who so brilliantly adapted The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, <\/em>and produced by so many of the same \u201ccreatives.\u201d Oh dear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two new London theatre productions, The Lie and Heisenberg\u2019s Uncertainty Principle, seem to have little in common, save that they are both topics discussed by philosophers. But director Lindsay Posner\u2019s The Lie by Florian Zeller, in a zippy translation and adaptation by Christopher Hampton (at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 18 November), and Heisenberg\u2019s Uncertainty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-nj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445\/revisions\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}