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Miriam Gillinson
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Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye is a sharp and surprisingly funny play, which unpicks a brother’s and sister’s past when they reunite after twenty years. It is a typical Fugard mixture of the universal and particular – asking questions of love, loyalty and religion through this family reunion. We learn why the sister left and the brother remained behind, with the off-stage and bed-ridden father exerting a heavy influence throughout. Rafe Spall and Saskia Reeves understand the play well and invest the production with subtlety and flair, developing their characters convincingly. The direction is less successful, overemphasising Fugard’s sometimes lofty monologues and neglecting his quieter, more complicated moments.
Spall pitches his performance well and draws the audience in with a cheeky, but unsettling opening monologue. His is a nervous character, with Johnny stammering and twitching his way through a chaos of fear and memory. It is when the past is hidden that this play works best, hinting at something horrifying yet retaining a light humour throughout. Something shifts however when sister Hester arrives and it all starts to feel a lot more conventional, tangible, comfortable. Hester has come to search for something and soon the two are wading through a box of forgotten memories together.
The play begins to slip as a rigid structure sets in and the siblings trade nostalgic monologues. The directing doesn’t help here, with Paul Robinson layering on the stage-effects over every sustained monologue. Whilst Fugard’s dialogue is crackling and funny, his monologues can sometimes run away from him: the writing loosens up and though he comes across some profound and strong images, he over-indulges along the way. It begins to feel like too much of a good thing and there’s nothing Reeves or Spall can do to keep us hooked.
The emotional heights aren’t quite reached here; Spall’s character becomes static and predictable and Reeves’ Hester a little too cold to understand. As the two contest their past, their characters become gradually polarised and their traits more pronounced. We edge towards a fairly clunky and inevitable conclusion, as the sister leaves and her brother’s fate is sealed. Fugard layers on the symbolism as Johnny casts away his father’s crutches and proclaims his resurrection. It’s too much too late, and what started out as a light yet threatening piece becomes all too easy to understand and forget.
Till 17 May 2008
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