Five Gold Rings
The Almeida, London

Ursula Strauss

Joanna Laurens' new play comes heavily framed by a rather intellectual debate surrounding its non-naturalistic language, which is purported to be something wildly new and original. All articles publicising the play - and even the programme - concentrate almost exclusively on this aspect.

While I suppose you can't blame the press for trying to find a new angle on something (although I do blame the producers of the programme), you have to ask yourself what this is all about. The imputation is that if you don't like the play, it is because the language is too innovative for you (Laurens article in the Guardian of December 11, 2003, makes it clear that her struggle has been to overcome the generally held doubts about whether '"poetic language" would work dramatically'). This serves rather to obscure our judgement on the play as a whole.

Yes, Laurens' use of language is interesting. But does that mean all other aspects of the theatrical are somehow jettisoned? For example, moments of dramatic action (of which there are precious few in this play, the scene where one of the couples compare their wedding bands being one of them), an emotional involvement with the characters, or even some sort of confrontation with a greater meaning or symbolism? What's to say that we can't have these as well as words?

This is exactly where the play fails. The language - it having been made entirely impossible not to raise this into a matter of debate - is alternately jewel-like (but with the coldness of a jewel), fey and on occasion desperately hackneyed. In the second half, some of the repetitions become almost unbearable: 'I'm loving you I'm loving you I'm loving you, I'm leaving you I'm leaving you I'm leaving you' being one of the more uncomfortable moments. This is not to say that Laurens' dialogue is not, at times, truly expressive and innovative, particularly when her mastery of poetic metaphor collides with colloquial speech, impotence referred to as 'soft as cheese' and the like. But it's a fragmentary brilliance that does not add up to anything more impactful because of its disconnection from the other textual elements of the play, the texts of action and character.

In the final analysis I cannot simply judge this play as it asks to be judged - by its language. The biggest problem with Five Gold Rings is that the subject matter - a Lear-like father and his squabbling, incestuous brood - never rises above the trivial. The play was well borne along by a very competent cast, but you needed a truly extraordinary performance to lift this into something more engaging. Will Keen as Simon did provide that performance. One could argue he was somewhat helped by the fact that in his case, the non-naturalistic language particularly suited Simon's stuffed-shirt character. Nonetheless his ability to invoke humour, pathos and his sheer command of the role were impressive.

I don't doubt that Laurens will go on to write better plays than this one when she has something more compelling to write about, and possibly when she is less convinced of her own innovativeness. The issue of originality is, as it always is, a smokescreen. Non-naturalistic dialogue has always been a part of the theatrical tradition. One only has to think of the plays of TS Eliot to see both the pleasures and the perils of this approach. As the woman behind me said, 'It's rather long, but then so is Shakespeare'. The debate around the play created the expectation that it should perhaps be viewed as a rather improving experience along these lines, but unfortunately I found it somewhat dull.

Till 17 January 2004.