MAN TO MAN | STAGE REVIEW
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Wed 23 March
Delving through sole character Ella Gericke’s broken and erratic memories as she sits drunk, old and lonely in her flat, Man To Man aims to grasp her wandering thoughts and piece together a timeline of her incredible life story.
A young widow in wartime Germany, she takes on her dead husband’s identity in order to carry on his job as a crane operator, so she can support herself. As she moves from job to job, during and after the war with the collapse of Germany going on around her, she keeps his identity until it becomes clear that it has gone beyond a practical basis and has increasingly merged into a psychological disorder. The story spans much of the twentieth century, and effectively gives a human level to many of the historical events which occurred in this period, as we see the direct consequences inflicted upon our narrator.
The story darts between subjects and decades in half a sentence (which admittedly can get taxing at times) and is carried by an incredibly visual mixture of performance (by the exceptional physical performer Margaret Ann Bain), lighting and set design to convey the sense of sifting through Gericke’s jagged and irrational thought processes. Pulling dresses out of solid walls, disappearing headfirst through a suitcase, floating in the corner of a room; the play provides many moments which are not only sheer visual spectacles but also contribute to the completely subversive nature of the play.
Bain is a very strong presence on stage; the way she is able to manipulate herself and the objects around her make it sometimes almost impossible to remember that she is the only performer in the production.
Adapted by young playwright Alexandra Wood exclusively for the Wales Millennium Centre from Manfred Karge’s German language original, Man To Man is the first in-house production by the Wales Millennium Centre under the new artistic direction or Graeme Farrow. It’s co-directed by Bruce Guthrie; who has been Associate Director to Sam Mendes for his world tour of Richard III, and Scott Graham; co-founder of leading physical theatre company Frantic Assembly. It has more than whetted the appetite for what will hopefully be a long run of in-house productions by the Wales Millennium Centre.
words STEPHEN SPRINGATE