TWO WAY MIRROR | STAGE REVIEW
The Gate Arts Centre, Cardiff, Thurs 8 May
My last experience with Arthur Miller was studying All My Sons at school and, being the nerdy teen I was, I fell in love with it. It had love triangles, crippling sorrow and an overarching critique of the American Dream.
With this in the back of my mind I was extremely excited to see two of Miller’s lesser known plays in one night with Two Way Mirror. The two productions on show are thought to have been inspired by Miller’s troubled relationship with sex symbol and movie star Marylyn Monroe, and I was intrigued to know what Miller had to say about his own life.
The first of the two shows, Elegy For A Lady, follows a conversation between and shop owner and one of her customers. A man enters the shop and soon explains that he is struggling to buy a gift for his mistress, who he believes is dying.
You can maybe blame my Britishness here but I always find stories that are based around someone telling their life story to a stranger a little far-fetched, unless it involves lots of stiff drinks and slurring. Despite the characters admitting the strangeness of situation (there are several “I can’t believe I’m telling you all this” lines) it never quite felt believable, even with strong performances by two person cast of Rebecca Robson and Elliot Chapman.
The script made some interesting points about how we define relationships and how we both understand and hide parts of ourselves from each other, but ultimately it came across as a man who has cheated on his wife, fallen in love with a dying woman, and can only complain about the difficult position it has put him in. I can’t say I cared much for the man’s purchasing problems, and I understand now why this is one of Miller’s ‘lesser known’ pieces of work.
In hindsight I like to this of this first play more as the supporting act than as half of the show because the second production, Some Kind Of Love Story, was excellent in every sense and the script returns to Miller’s strength of peeling away to the truth.
Tom O’Toole (Chapman) is a private detective that has been working on a case for five years, trying relentlessly to get an innocent man out of jail. All this time O’Toole has been trying to get information out of Angela (Robson), a lady of the night who has schizophrenia, who claims to know plenty of secrets about the case but just won’t tell.
Robson was excellent as Angela, switching between her ‘personalities’ and emotions perfectly and with the right amount of subtlety, whilst Chapman was able to get across his complicated feelings of love, trust and frustration with a believability and pace that slowly built up sympathy.
I love any piece of work that keeps my opinions and understanding about the characters changing – and Some Kind Of Love Story did this excellently as my sympathies kept changing sides. As Angela clings to her secrets, the only power she has in this world, we slowly understand why Chapman is so frustrated. He appears to love this woman to some degree, but trying to work with her is exhausting.
In this play we are given a small glimpse into Miller’s life loving a woman whose mental instability is exhausting and hurtful. It was an honest piece about many things but it was this that was most potent. It is well worth sitting through the first play to get to the Miller gem at the end.