‘Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle’ – Wyndham’s Theatre – Saturday 16th December 2017

(Rated 7/5 ) 

This review has been uncertain – in fact I have not been able to predict whether it would be written at all. I saw the play with my father 9 days before Christmas and then the very fact of Christmas coming and preparations for that made it difficult for me to be certain of finding time to write it. I have also not been able to be sure of getting it done since and now I sit typing I feel uncertain – as to be fair I do for all reviews and all my writing – as to what words and in what order and with what spaces in between will come out of me right now. What I can be certain of is that it was such a special evening that I would be very disappointed not to have this review to permanently try to record my experience of it for the future. That said I feel doubtful as to how much I will remember and - when I read it back at some uncertain future date – what memories of emotion will be triggered. Life is of course very uncertain. There is very little we can hold on to for sure. If we look hard at something and keep focusing on it as though to capture it forever we may not even realise it is moving away from us… until perhaps it has totally gone. Decades earlier I would never have known having seen a stage show with both my parents – that it would be the last time I would do so with Mum and that it would be years before Dad and I did so with just her spirit – but oh what a spirit filled with love of the theatre – with us. The thought of that on that night and now makes my head spin with the unpredictability of us beings and our being in this world…

So maybe I should end my philosophising a la Heisenberg and get on with writing what I thought about it! For this one I had no real expectations and was very pleasantly surprised. A play about a chance meeting between two very different people – both who have spent years trying to control their existences in this uncertain world – and found strategies to cope creating – apparently – a resistance to any kind of a relationship between them. And having met once by chance why would they meet again and so develop any connection at all in any case? In the development of his two-hander, writer Simon Stephens plays with numerous ideas involving Heisenberg’s Principle and has it as a third character constantly impacting on Georgie and Alex’s interactions, their dialogue, their circumstances and discussion of ideas on how the principle plays out in music, dance and many other aspects of life. It is as though the scientist Heisenberg – with us the audience of researchers - is studying these two humans in an experiment and the wonderful staging and production – so minimal yet capable of expressing so much – reflect that concept. With just a very few props - which the actors assist the mechanics of the staging to appear and disappear – different locations and rooms are created with the aid of the audience’s imaginations and actors descriptions. The lighting is used to either stark or hazy effect as though to create chemical solvents into which to add the substances – the characters. Will they attract or repel?

Alex (Kenneth Cranham) does seem to be initially repelled by the unwanted advances of Georgie (Anne-Marie Duff) at the busy railway station where they first meet. She is American, out-spoken, kind of crazy and much younger than himself. He is a quiet English butcher who loves the silence of walks, dancing and the spaces between the notes of Bach. Anne-Marie Duff is exceptional giving us a character of maddening attractiveness and humour and whom we can’t believe as she lies! Kenneth Cranham provides the perfect foil. Together their performances are mesmerizing. Her exuberance complimented by his stillness, they go on a journey together through the wealth of human feelings with Simon Stevens giving us just enough information about their backstories and the actors emoting so well as to make us fully empathise with them both and fascinated by how things will turn out for them. What will be the results of the experiment? What can be we conclude about uncertain human behaviour in our unpredictable settings?

#HeisenbergPlay

Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle – Review by TheRestrictedReviewer © 2017