Everyman: an Immorality Play
Riverside Studios , London

Annette Mees

Goran Stefanovski's new play is based on the medieval morality play Everyman in which God sends Death to Earth. God thinks that the spiritual life of human beings is desolate and blind. All that human beings care about is fortune.

In the traditional story, when Death comes to take him, Everyman is afraid and begs to be allowed companions. He tries to convince everything that is important to him, from Wealth to Beauty, to join him, but everyone declines. When all lessons are taught only the character Good Deeds stays with him into Death - and of course secures his place in heaven. The conclusion tells us that everyone will die and nothing is left except his good deeds.

Stefanovski turns this principle upside down by confronting a doubting Death with six self-assured, self-absorbed and hedonistic mortals. Death is having an identity crisis due to a lost love and professional difficulties caused by current secular obsessions with youth, eternal life and plastic surgery. She comes to earth disguised as holiday rep Anastasia to work her magic on a group of stranded holidaymakers at the end of the season in Spain, in the hope of instilling fear of death into mankind again. It is an exciting and promising premise tying modern morality together with the classic morality play.

The design certainly looks the part. An askew bath house sprouting a diving board on a single rock, surrounded by azure tiles which continue across stage to form a swimming pool. Next to the pool is a bar containing tropical cocktails and a dancers' pole from which a string of coloured lights makes its way back to the bath house. The set design combines aesthetic beauty, wit and awkward theatricality and is filled with nooks and crannies for props and people to appear from and disappear into.

The production, however, does no justice to its premise or its design. When Anastasia opens the play with a monologue, she does so in a strong Eastern-European, Dracula-inspired accent and sporting several physical tics. The aim is probably to make her sound ancient, sinister and troubled, but it does nothing more then make the monologue introducing the whole play sound silly and rather unclear.

Things do not improve with the arrival of the rest of the cast. Each character represents a sin - Envy is portrayed by a socialite addicted to plastic surgery, Wrath by a right wing racist extremist, Avarice by a yuppie stockbroker, Lust by a drug craving clubber in an extremely short skirt and Gluttony by a bulimic health freak obsessed with his own body, while a crisps and soap-opera-devouring housewife embodies Sloth. The actors and director seem to have stopped any further exploration of the characters after they found these rough character sketches.

This production's one-dimensional creations are not even successful caricatures of human traits which give the audience moments of recognition and revelation. None of the characters command empathy nor sympathy or even interest. While the play unfolds, a series of missed opportunities is on display. In a physical scene with a great comical potential where every character nestles on a blanket near the swimming pool, only Helen Terry manages to conjure laughter.

This problem runs through the entire play - none of the observations, jokes or situations are clever enough to be funny. Sometimes clever wordplay can be heard in the script but mostly this is lost in the bombardment of over the top acting, bad karaoke and a complete lack of coherent plot development. Towards the end of the play Death calls out in despair 'I don't know what is the matter with me. I make no sense'. That sums up the play quite nicely.

Till 30 May 2004.