Attempting to mix absurdist farce, real tragedy and an ocean of analysis, Edward Einhorn’s candy however unsatisfying play imagines a Jewish wedding ceremony for the well-known modernist couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. With the dialogue looping and careening akin to the way in which that Stein wrote, Einhorn’s play purports to be about these two outstanding girls and the love between them, however the script is way extra preoccupied by the idiosyncrasies of the well-known males cavorting across the pair.
In 1933, Stein revealed The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, about and supposedly by the love of her life. Right here, Einhorn toys with authorial voice, with Stein as our narrator. She addresses us straight, Natasha Byrne enjoying the author with a stern certainty, introducing every scene and the characters that our four-strong solid are pretending to be in that second. As they roll by the greats of modernism attending their fantasy wedding ceremony – Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Alfred North Whitehead, all well-performed however shallow caricatures – the present rapidly takes on the guise of an novice improv skit.
Alyssa Simon performs Toklas, gentler than Stein however with a wry wit. As she sits reluctantly alongside the opposite wives of geniuses, the pseudointellectual conversations between their companions develop tedious, with the play seemingly overwhelmed by the necessity to embrace each argument modernists ever had with each other. The analysis put into their discussions is apparent, however the comedy right here is missing. With out being woven right into a story, these scenes really feel like we’ve stumbled into philosophy class with out being warned to do the homework.
The motif of pretending is a weighty one, significantly with the connotations of falsehood hooked up to queer relationships. However it is just on the very finish of the play that the concept is used to piece collectively the disparate elements of the textual content. Alice’s transferring last monologue, revealing what the couple misplaced by not being formally wedded, offers a stronger sense of their relationship, and a far heftier emotional kick, than the whole previous script.
A lot of the play is spent in quest of understanding what makes a genius. Way more highly effective are the moments when that quest is ignored, and focus is as an alternative directed in direction of the specifics: of the love between these two girls and of the imagined wedding ceremony they weren't allowed to have.
At Jermyn Avenue theatre, London, till 16 April
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