JOHN
DIRECTOR: Jeremeo Le Cordeur
CAST: Andre Lombard, Melissa Haiden
VENUE: Artscape Arena
UNTIL: Saturday
RATING: **
DESPITE its intensely personal theme, this chronicle of a man obsessed with rediscovering his lost love through assignations with sex workers maintains an unexpectedly low emotional temperature, whether by accident or design. If the latter, it is presumably to turn his quest into an intellectual exercise – not wholly inappropriate given that the chief protagonist, hiding behind the name “John”, is an astrophysicist constantly invoking numbers. If the former, its effect is to distance both audience and performers from the human passion implicit in John’s experience.
His progress through different encounters with sex workers eventually brings his liberation from the bondage of idealised, remembered love, but, again, the ending is strangely joyless, just as his interaction with the women is less erotic than one would expect.
Lombard’s work, which he performs, has the potential to engage audience attention, but it needs more dynamism to deliver its agenda. For instance, the opening sequence has him preparing for his first-ever engagement with a lady of the night, and the nervousness attendant on this event is lost in the laborious pace of his dressing.
The appearance of credits for the production as clothes are removed from the bed also reminds spectators that this is a play rather than a representation of reality – promoting further detachment.
The chief strength of John has to be the versatility of Melissa Haiden in various guises, equally convincing as a hormonal 13-year- old, a venal and domineering madam, a drug-addicted waif, and the wayward woman into whom John’s schoolboy crush has matured. Each role elicits interpretation from the heart to create psychological verisimilitude, and Haiden’s own personality is absorbed into that of the persona portrayed.
Lombard offers an earnest and, at times endearing reading of the eponymous lead, but needs to inject more fire into his performance. John is a sympathetic character, but his eccentricities and dogged demeanour detract from any heroic quality this protagonist might have.
Jeremeo Le Cordeur’s set and lighting serve the production efficiently and with imagination; the dingy side-stage setting for John’s encounter with Roxy, the drug-addict, is masterly in its simplicity, contrasting strongly with the bedroom (centre stage) in which most of the action is centred. A visual gem is Haiden’s pose atop the ladder (side stage) reproducing the nude painting above John’s bed.
As the run progresses, it is possible that more warmth might be injected into this play to make it engage the heart as well as the mind.