Love, Death....and Secrets
Neil LaBute's "Wrecks" at the Bush Theatre
A good piece of artwork is surely one that causes a reaction in you and stays with you long after you have seen it, read it, listened to it. It is several days since I saw Neil LaBute's “Wrecks” at the Bush Theatre and I am still going over it in my head: how did the one-hour monologue lead to such an expected ending without me noticing where it was all going?
Robert Glenister (in the BBC's Hustle) plays a chain-smoking widower, mourning the loss of his recently deceased wife. In a pink-carpeted chapel of rest in small-town America, the grieving Edward Carr recounts the story of his life, of how he met his beloved wife JoJo, how they started a business together, had a family and then finally faced her illness and death.
Lighting up one cigarette after another, we hear how Edward grew up in a foster home, how he fell in love with his wife at first sight, had an affair with her when she was still married to another man and how she was the only woman he had ever slept with. But his love for her is almost obsessive. So much so that even spending a couple of nights away from her causes him unbearable pain and sends him into an irrational panic, fearing that something terrible will happen to her.
Edward paces around the coffin in the centre of the stage, surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke and takes us on a rollercoaster of emotions. He is angry that JoJo developed cancer, angry that she should be the one to fall ill when he is the one with the unhealthy habits. At the same time, he wells up with love and admiration when he recalls the times he had together with her.
The great themes of life – love and death - are here in generous helpings and the monologue is delivered by Glenister with great passion and more than a little humour. As the story progresses, we can feel that it is leading us somewhere and this is what holds our attention to the very end.
On JoJo's deathbed, she whispers into her husband's ear the secret that she has been carrying around with her for most of her life but has never told a soul: that, as a teenager, she was raped by an uncle and gave birth to a son who was then taken away from her. “Her big crime that she had carried around in her heart all her life,” says Edward.
But Edward has a far more startling secret of his own which he shares with the audience in the final moments of the play. He tells us, his collective confidant, a secret which he dare not tell anybody else, knowing full well what the result will be: social ostracism. He has crossed a fixed social boundary and we are collectively stunned by the news. “I didn't see that coming,” I overheard the man next to me say. And neither did I. Yet, looking back, there had been hints and clues all the way through but we had misinterpreted them, taken them at face value because everything had seemed so 'normal'.
Don't worry, Edward, your secret is safe with us.
Yasmine Estaphanos
15 February 2009
Related links
|
