PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Alma Tavern, Bristol (to Sat 12 Nov)

THEATRE As the latest instalment of Theatre West's Picture This season opens, Kamila (Nadia Williams) is singing fragments of Bizet's 'Carmen' to Oscar (Chris Bianchi) on the prow of their river boat. When it ends, she is leaving him, while "I Want To Be Happy..." plays on the wireless. In between, there has been some jazz and some Wagner – and a play which feels itself like the libretto for some unmade opera. It’s a traditional, even old-fashioned drama of long speeches and formal language.

We're in Germany in the 1920s; Oscar is an older man who's reading 'All Quiet on the Western Front' but doesn't like to talk about the war; Kamila is a black woman who likes German cooking, remembers Africa, but longs to go to New York. Onto their boat comes Lukas (Hugh Holman), an art student, who wants to paint scenes of German life. Before long, masks are being stripped off and secrets revealed. Smiling, eager-to-please Lukas gets drunk on Oscar's Riesling and tells him that the First World War was the fault of The Jew. Oscar, to no-one’s great surprise, reveals that he’s Jewish himself. There is something a little Ibsen-esque about it; a play conceived as a psychological striptease.

From the moment Oscar tells Kamila she can't sing (when she obviously can), their relationship is convincing: a couple who communicate entirely through back-biting and sarcasm. The Alma stage is tiny at the best of times, but today the action is limited to a still smaller space representing the boat.

Everything feels cramped; everyone is in everyone's personal space as well as their head-space. But at 80 minutes, the text feels quite spacious; there's plenty of time to establish the status quo before Lukas comes along and disrupts it. By the time Oscar offers to sell his priceless violin to buy Kamila's freedom, we feel like we're coming to the end of a novel, rather than a one act play. If there is a message or a metaphor (neither the Jewish man, the black woman, nor the artistic youth is going to have a great time in 1930s Germany) it’s laid on very thinly indeed. This is mainly a character piece. (Andrew Rilstone)

Copyright Andrew Rilstone 2011

Pictures: Farrows Creative