This frustrating play with its uncertain dramatic drive, is an adaption for the theatre of Penelope Lively’s novel of the same name.
Clearly Ms Lively writes excellent prose, there is no argument about that – but excellent prose does not always adapt for the theatre, which demands drama if a piece is to succeed.
Directed with insight and great elegance by Stephen Unwin and set beautifully by Timothy Bird, the essence of Moon Tiger depends on its central character, a feminist, Claudia, whose role is to give us copious narrations about the circumstances of her life from a remembered childhood spent amongst the comfortably-off middle class somewhere in the home counties, to her wartime experiences in Egypt as a newspaper reporter.
Claudia is dying from an incurable cancer and the play opens with a large white bed centre stage, with en suite fluid drip bottles.
This is a fractious woman, anxious to complete her book on the history of the world, before she leaves this planet for elsewhere. For the actress playing this charming, yet aggravating woman (the superb Jane Asher, who is clearly-spoken and a pleasure to watch) it means scrambling in and out of bed every five minutes to tell us about everyday things ranging from her lovers in the thirties, to the banalities of seaside holidays, first discoveries as a child about the intricacies of sex and flickers of parental disciplines. Claudia’s life now and later is all quandary and no conclusion.
It all makes for a leaden, even prosaic first act, and Unwin uses as a production technique Brecht’s well-known theory of alienation, seating the actors on surrounding chairs where they watch the action silently, moving forward into it as their cue arrives. It is a cold theatrical style and distances you from emotion, and the last thing this piece needs is distancing.
Part Two, however, is a great improvement.
Claudia’s interminable narration (leaping in and out of her death bed, of course) is interspersed with moments of dialogue between herself, her lovers, her daughter, soldiers and the odd Egyptian guide she meets in the desert or around the Great Pyramid, (good work from Christopher Brandon and Philip Cumbus in a variety of roles).
Suddenly there is colour and emotion and finally you see a dramatic trajectory emerging.
I wish the production well, but firmly believe it would have done better in Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime slot.
