From the archive : Much-delayed review of Max Barton’s No Magic – performance 6 March 2010 !

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12 May

As one who came to Cambridge’s ADC Theatre (Amateur Dramatic Club (@adctheatre)) that night clutching book 6 of Harry Potter (HP and the Half-Blood Prince), it was a distinct surprise – not to say ‘spooky’ – to find that the performance opened with Potter, and, within moments, Max Barton, as his own Harry, crying out Expelliarmus !.

In the flyer’s write-up, the play’s origins in Barton’s reading of Jekyll and Hyde are made explicit. However, for anyone with a background in the world of mental-health, they make one wonder whether, in his premise for the work, he has mistaken the symptomatology of multiple personality disorder (as it tends to be called, rather than split personality) for that of paranoid schizophrenia*.

In fact, the suspicion turned out to be justified, because, although it was suggested that Harry might have been hearing voices (as those with the diagnosis of schizophrenia commonly, but not invariably do (auditory hallucination)), there was great weight placed on the notion that he was acting under the name of Edward Catcher (we do not learn Harry’s surname) as a distinct personality, who has distinctly violent, even murderous, inclinations. [Touches of Hitchock’s Psycho (1960), not to mention Powell’s Peeping Tom from the same year ?]

As the drama unfolded, any belief dissipated (although it did occasionally revive) that Barton might have seen a more subtle parallel between Hyde and the apparent subject of his own work : it had been initally fostered by the fact that the programme notes, despite the flyer’s suggestion, did not mention Stevenson after all). There was also an increasing feeling that the seeming similarities with Sebastian Faulks’ novel Engleby**, itself clearly set in Cambridge, might be more than coincidental, and that maybe, when it came to the involvement of a lawyer in Harry’s unfolding case, implausibly so. Yet, Faulks’ novel, too, appears to have, as its proper subject personality disorder, its possible origins, and its public understanding.

Interestingly, in the scenes with the lawyer, and in Harry’s prior experiences at some unnamed Cambridge college, there was an allusion to the finding attested by an apparent body of research – the link, because skunk is a highly concentrated form of hash (specially cultivated for being stronger than the ‘traditional’ forms of hash), between its use and the onset of schizophrenia. Or, perhaps more properly, the sorts of psychotic experiences to which this label is frequently applied. What made this allusion relevant was the way in which Barton’s text appeared to suggest is that there might be a cynical manipulation of such research findings, by the legal profession, to exculpate the guilty from full responsibility for their crimes – a topic more fully and knowingly dealt with by Faulks’ eponymous Corpus graduate (Harry does not get to graduate).

The way in which No Magic and Engleby both fight shy of specificity are also, one can only believe, more than chance: Faulks renames a well-known pub in Bene’t Street, but, at the same time, makes it so clear, from the choice of alternative name, which one he is referring to, as one of Engleby’s largely solitary drinking haunts, that one wonders why he has bothered. Likewise, although Barton himself is at Cambridge, we are only told in a wry way that Harry is there, in a running joke, carried off to great effect by the cast. There is, though, no way of knowing at which college the 'real' Edward Catcher was an undergraduate (although, for no good reason, one suspects Fitzwilliam).



Postscript

If completed, this review would have dealt with the subjects whose headings follow, but the fact that it did not is why it is incomplete… [However, recollected comments, in square brackets such as these, have been added - there was some contemporaneous correspondence with Barton, which, when located, may provide more detail / confirmation] :


1. Blocking / staging
[The most vivid moment was one that reminded of the infernal scenes in What Dreams May Come (1998) (not to say Doré's illustrations of Dante), and the terror of Event Horizon (1997), in an effective combination of latex and lighting***]


2. Acting
[The principals were probably fine, with Barton as Harry****]


3. Ensemble
[Almost certainly generally tight enough, even if some scenes could have been dwelt on less in the playing]


4. Text
[As mentioned, there was a certain teasing coyness about where this place (Cambridge) might be, which suited the likely audience congratulating itself that it was 'in the know' - hard to remember now whether Barton's evocation succeeded, probably in the midst of in-jokes, in portraying a more recognizable Cambridge than Larkin did Oxford in his undergraduate novel Jill]


5. Further comments about pathology
[Only that the attempt to cover similar ground to Faulks also gave rise to somewhat cynical attempt to take down the whole justice system by association - a matter much in people's minds with Yewtree just now]



End-notes

* A useful confirmation can be found in the published diary of Phoebe Pluckrose-Oliver, who was the show's producer :

Last night I was up until 1am in the Homerton auditorium making 3.5m by 2m frames out of Lycra and scaffolding for the set we’ve devised for the play. [...]

The frames are an important part of the set for the play, which is called ‘No Magic’. Written by a second year student on my course, Max Barton, it’s about an undergraduate who develops paranoid schizophrenia.


** Hutchinson, London, 2007.

*** This aspect seemed to have attracted favourable comment from Nathan Brooker, the (more-timely) reviewer for Varsity (though issue 731 seemed to be having a dig and /or private joke with the last of its (festive) Predictions : Max Barton will resurrect his verse-comedy No Magic).

**** The resource of camdram.net is interesting...

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)