The Book of Disquiet – Blue Elephant Theatre, London

Translator/Adapter of the Portuguese Text: Mark O’Thomas

Director: Nicholai La Barrie

Reviewer: Vicky Bell

The Public Reviews Rating:

The Blue Elephant is building a reputation for supporting emerging artists and advocating both innovative new work and revamped classics. It was this, along with the friendly, laid back vibe that tempted me back to the venue to see The Book of Disquiet. I wasn’t disappointed; this was a challenging new piece of work, keen to experiment with the barriers of theatre situated in one of the most welcoming fringe venues London has to offer.

The piece started in the bar where we were introduced to one audience member who would be performing as Geoff in the production that evening and reassured us that no-one else would be expected to take part. We were then taken into their studio, transformed into a simple smoky office. This was a promenade performance and the actors moved freely around us combining heavy text with strong visual imagery.

The text was adapted from Portuguese writer Fernado Pessoa’s book The Book of Disquiet described as “at once part novel, part memoir, and part literary chronicle and paradoxically none of these” by translator/adapter Mark O’Thomas. O’Thomas together with director Nicholai La Barrie very much kept this sentiment from the text with very distinct moments of story juxtaposed with reflection and commentary on society.

La Barrie’s direction enabled the audience to follow these moments and his use of overt theatricality marked the different moments with great clarity. At times though this theatricality did distract from the text as I found myself adjusting to the change in form. This was brave direction and this experimental approach to form should be applauded.

The cast too deserve recognition for their command of a difficult text and multiplicity of form, at once storytellers, performance artists and facilitators. Their ability to support our audience member through the production while losing nothing from the piece was refreshing – no longer the awkward audience participation but rather a comfortable, well directed audience member inhabiting our access point for the piece.

They were also responsible for transforming the space at any given time from chalk drawings manically created with the thought processes of a city commuter prone to panic attacks to experimenting with lighting to accent different moments of comfort and discomfort as attention is placed on each character.

The lighting too was key to navigating the space with a clear design by Pablo Fernadez Baz in keeping with the experimental nature of the production, a light bulb placed inside the water cooler served as a symbol of it’s importance in the workplace as a focus of social interaction and gossip.

While sometimes the form struggled to gel, it was this willingness to play with form that created these details and moments that made this piece enjoyable.