HEADLONG

...In sharp contrast, there is Pirandello's Six Characters In Search Of An Author, one of drama's most original, profound and paradoxical mediations on the relationship between theatre and reality. To work, it must dazzle as it did when it opened in 1921, which is the astonishing achievement of Rupert Goold and Ben Power's new take on the play, which challenges us to think about how we get closest to the truth-through reality or invention, fact or fiction?































Their bold and brilliant idea is to reset the play in a studio where a drama-documentary is being made about the assisted suicide of a terminally ill 14-year-old, using both real footage and dramatic reconstruction. Just as the producer is being told the piece lacks authenticity and edge-somewhat too late since the boy is now dead-six characters created by an author burst in and demand that their tragic tale is told. Since her actors have nothing to do, the producer lets them loose on the characters' material (with hilarious consequences), raising all sorts of ideas about how an actor makes a part 'real' and the dramatic structure that a narrative requires to make a story feel as truthful as life itself.































The triumph of this serious, frequently funny, always arresting production is that while remaining aware of Pirandello's over-arching theories, one becomes imaginatively immersed in the unfolding dramas and relationships. The in-jokes, albeit amusing, are over the top but the finale, when drama, fiction and illusion collide and the producer becomes a participant in both the suicide documentary and the characters' tragedy, would, I suspect, have had Pirandello purring pleasure