Adler and Gibb ***

Royal Court Theatre, Jerwood Downstairs

EXCERPT: "It is unabashedly and unapologetically a piece that - whilst not entirely alienating - would also not be something that many people would effusively recommend or, possibly, enjoy."

Summary

The children swing their legs on the chairs. The student delivers the presentation. The older woman stands with the gun. The young couple arrives at the house. The house is returning to nature. A movie is being made. The truth is being plundered. But the house is still lived in and the spirit to resist is strong. Adler & Gibb tells the story of a raid – on a house, a life, a reality and a legacy. The play takes Tim Crouch’s fascination with form and marries it to a thrilling story of misappropriation.

Janet Adler and Margaret Gibb were conceptual artists working in New York at the end of the last century. They were described by art critic Dave Hickey as the ‘most ferociously uncompromising voice of their generation’. With Adler’s death in 2004, however, the compromise began.

Thoughts

Tim Crouch's Adler and Gibb is not for everyone. It is thought provoking about the nature of art, its purpose and posterity, and how later representations confuse and alter the substance of the art and artist. Tim Crouch and Andy Smith co-direct, bringing quite theatrically imaginative elements to the play. Two children are used as stage hands throughout and reinforce the film set feel of Lizzie Clachan's design. It is bleak, incisive, probably quite pretentious, and determinedly unemotional - we never empathise with the characters. At the beginning, normal dialogue is delivered in an unrealistic and stylised form, and this makes it a bit confusing at points. It is unabashedly and unapologetically a piece that - whilst not entirely alienating - would also not be something that many people would effusively recommend or, possibly, enjoy. I fell in between - I think it's good that the royal court keep commissioning and producing adventurous writers and plays - after all, Edward Bond's Saved and Sarah Kane's Blasted we're never set to be real crowd pleasers. Personal preference though? I'd pick a meaty and naturalistic deconstruction of humanity through character exposition and developing relationships any time.