If you have absolutely nothing else to do then try watching Eastenders with the sound off. Doesn’t have to be Enders, any soap will do. You will be immediately struck by how incredibly contrived it looks. When was the last time you had a conversation with the back of someone’s head so you’re both facing the same way for the cameras? When did your family last sit down to dinner all on one side of the table for the same reason? When you watch TV you are invited not to notice the artifice: as screens in the home reach the size of 50s American drive-ins, you are almost in the kitchen sink drama enjoying a brain bath.
The viewing experience in the theatre is very different. The whole point is that you cannot ignore the artificiality; you can’t put a play on live pause to phone your Nan or nip out for a pizza. You have to engage with what you are watching in a much more active way: you can’t just slump passively in front of it.
There are no words spoken at all in the 90 minutes of The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other at the National Theatre but that does not mean there is no story in Meredith Oakes’ translation of Peter Handke’s play. Quite the contrary. The total absence of dialogue and conventional narrative structure engage the audience with the action in an almost mesmeric exercise in meaning making.
‘All’ that happens in the play is that characters enter, do something and exit. That of course is all that really happens in any play – from Hamlet to The Sound of Music. The difference in The Hour is that the onus is on the audience member to supply the stories rather than waiting to be told what is going on. The characters’ silence makes us aware of just how much information we derive about people from the way they dress, walk and look. Prejudices and stereotypes are exposed, challenged and subverted. The piece is funny, terrifying, surreal and sad by turns. I cannot tell you what it is ‘about’ because the meanings I supplied came from my personal experience on the night I went: I saw the three witches from Macbeth, King Lear and his Fool, the angel of death, the end of the world, a man haunted by his past, a beautiful girl who had just found her lover had hanged himself and all that was just for starters.
Without the dialogue to distract, the ‘vocabulary’ of TV becomes clunky and intrusive, but in the theatre it comes into its own. The lighting, sound effects and excellent music whirl Hildegard Bechtler’s beguiling urban square set through all four seasons, corners of the globe and every moment of day and night. The sheer volume of characters calls for a warehouse full of props and costumes and I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to rehearse for the 27 strong ensemble cast. The details and nuances the actors bring to each vignette of storytelling as they chase each other across the Lyttleton stage are a true pleasure to experience.
Well worth making the trip to the South Bank for – set the digibox to record your soaps for later.
The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other runs at the National Theatre in London until 12 April 2008.
