Monday, March 03, 2008

Free Press

So, having read Lyn Gardner and Andrew Haydon’s enthusiastic recommendations of Pierre Rigal’s Press at the Gate Theatre, I was both very keen to see it for myself, and also slightly apprehensive: what if I end up being that one person, you know, the one who doesn’t get it, the one left feeling bemused while everyone else whoops and applauds. I needn’t have worried. Both Lyn and Andrew were right. It was a superb piece of theatre, visually striking, spatially inventive, both genuinely funny and sinister at the same time, sometimes claustrophobic and intense, sometimes childishly brilliant, with a rare understanding of its own limitations. I don’t want to go over it in too much detail, as much of the pleasure of the show comes from the way it unfolds, the unexpected touches, the various feelings it evokes. I’ll just add my small, timid mumble of approval to their justified cheers.

My enjoyment of the show even overrode the twin irritations of the chap in the front row with the cough of a 90 year old moustachioed major and having some Notting Hill lady’s handbag wedged in my back for fifteen minutes as we waited for the house doors to open in the miniscule Gate Theatre box office/lobby space,

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