Pains of Youth, National Theatre London - Review

1920s Drama About the Moral Sickness of Post-war Medical Students

Nov 13, 2009

Katie Mitchell has always stretched the boundaries in her theatre productions but in this case the audience's patience is painfully over-stretched.

The Pains of Youth at the National Theatre in London is a loveless play about the young searching for love; an endless merry-go-round of trial and error. This group of sorry warriors in Ferdinand Bruckner's 1920s Expressionist drama have little to communicate other than their frustrations and dis-empowerment after the First World War, in which the cream of German male youth was decimated.

The focal point of Bruckner's theatre play set in Vienna in a new version by Martin Crimp and directed by the much lauded Katie Mitchell is about a group of male and female medical students trying to emancipate themselves from a society of bourgeois values: a social order ruptured by a surplus of young women taking up what was hitherto a male province.

The recently graduated young doctor Marie (played by Laura Elphistone) thrusts a diatribe of ideaologies at her less fortunate peers. Feeling a sense of supreme power, she delivers her outrage somewhat hysterically – in fact most of the evening is carried on in this fashion. Maybe this can be attributed to the director Katie Mitchell who seems determined to shoot herself in the proverbial foot by projecting the play's symbolic elements at times in a naturalistic look that would seem to be more fitting in a private room than on a stage.

On the one hand this theatre director's audacious presentation of the beginnings and ends of scenes, (changing the props and settings by a group of pneumatic male and female scene shifters) aided by flashes of pulse lighting effects; screwing up the tension with rythmic atonal music, is a stunning stage conception. Unfortunately however, the cast is left to throw the expressionist dialogue to and fro like an intellectual ball with an intense savagery quite often in the dark.

The director opts for a naturalistic light on Vicki Mortimer's cunning set with it's genuine period parquet flooring but the dimly lit day and particularly the night scenes which find the actors scrambling for what little light there is from the yellow glow of twenties table lamps, leaves the audience literally in the dark.

Perhaps to be heard but not seen is the desired effect but not to see the medical students facial expressions of torment and pain without straining the eyes proves to be tiring. On many occassions actors in major moments address there speeches for long periods with their backs to the audience, facing the rear walls which is a further irritant. Much of Bruckner's drama is drained away by casting out a golden rule of the theatre--actors and props need to be clearly seen.

Punishing Performances Reach Fever Pitch

The only character that is remotely sympathetic is the young maid Lucy (Sian Clifford) who has the job of cleaning the rooms of this unappealing, self-obsessed group of tortured souls. At least she seems to be enjoying life after being persuaded to become a prostitute by Freder, a Machiavellian manipulator ((played with cutting ferocity by Geoffrey Streatfeild). As for the rest of these happless, sado-masochistic self-hating females, the shackles of middle-class values provide a good excuse to inflict or endure pain and if that doesn't relieve their suffering they have no further option but to top themselves.

For the aristocratic trainee doctor Desiree (Lydia Wilson) its option two; spending most of her time moping in bed alone or with the ocassional male or female partner." Bourgeois existence or suicide.There are no other choices. It's not remotely a joke," she pouts. Yet another desperate soul begs for a good whipping which alas finding no takers, errupts her lesbian instincts.There is one attractive male Alt (Jonah Russel) but alas even he is stigmatised for being a bearded intellectual.

At this point instead of all that nasty schnapps a slice of Sacher Torte and a mug of bromide would certainly show them the light!

However when all is said and done Katie Mitchell is to be commended for this attempt to bring Bruckner's painful play to the theatre going public, a reminder that the selfish love of the youth of today is little different than that of the 1920's.

Pains of Youth runs from Oct 28th 2009 to Jan 21st 2010 at The National Theatre in the Cottesloe. To book tickets call the box office Tel: 0207 452 3300 or book online at the National Theatre Website.

Theatre-goers who have seen this production and now need cheering up they would do well to see Arturo Brachetti CHANGE; it's just the ticket!

The copyright of the article Pains of Youth, National Theatre London - Review in British Modern Theatre is owned by Nina Saville. Permission to republish Pains of Youth, National Theatre London - Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.