The Dying of Today, Howard Barker
The Other Room
The challenge a company takes on, when attempting to produce Howard Barker’s The Dying of Today, is not simply dealing with the complexity of the themes and content; the catastrophe.
Rather it is coming to terms with the style in which it is written: the long novelistic speeches; the literary over the performative; the descriptive over the active and all this whilst keeping an audience engaged.
The Other Room production team, with director Kate Wasserberg at the helm, has risen to this challenge with unwavering triumph. It should be noted that this company is very young, only months in existence. However, there is nothing infantile or immature about the conviction in which they have approached this beast of a play.
The play itself presents us with a barber’s shop when a new customer arrives with, quite literally, the business of giving bad news, nay the worst news, the barber is ever likely to hear. Then the events turn in on themselves: the barber is the one who tells the news – news that he does not know himself deeming the intended giver of the bad news redundant, leaving all participants in this wild exchange doomed.
Leander Deeny (Dneister) and Christian Patterson (The Barber) play this exchange with utter beauty, and the rawness required to exist in Howard Barker’s world. Even in the long speeches there is an exchange so engaging that you daren’t look at your programme for fear of missing a word or action. Each thought is played with such importance and intention that the feeling you are in the most important moment of these two men’s lives, emanates around this wonderfully intimate space.
These magnificent performances are enabled fantastically by Wasserberg’s intelligent staging. The close quarters work is incredibly well with the simple barbershop set design bringing home the humanity of the strange circumstances. The clever device of using ‘the fourth wall’ as a mirror brings the whole play to the audience and in such an intimate space there is no escape from the tragic events that unfold.
This was my first time in The Other Room in it’s current from. I have performed, attended rehearsals, watched movies and even seen Ping-Pong matches being fought out in this space. But now, The Other Room, I feel, has really found its true purpose. Executive producers and proprietors Dan Porter and David Wilson have simply got it right here. How exciting is it to have a pub theatre in Cardiff? It makes an already vibrant arts scene even brighter and I, for one, am very excited about what is to come.
If you haven’t already got your ticket for this play get it now.
Runs until April 11.