Latest editorial
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
JONATHAN TAYLOR is fascinated by the philosophical problems that permeate the art of life-writing
GORDON PARSONS steps warily in between the lines of Britain’s most famous diarist
SIMON DUFF recommends a recording of Arvo Part that takes the listener on a pilgrimage through seemingly distant times and events of the Bible
WHEN asked recently whether he would describe his latest work as a play, Chris Thorpe replied: “I don’t care.” He’s not a traditional playwright and Victory Condition is not a traditional, or easily understood, play.
In it Man (Jonjo O’Neill) and Woman (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) have just returned from a holiday in Greece, not that you’d be able to tell from their largely morbid overlapping monologues, whose subject matter wafts from dreams where “angels were aliens” to “a man in a Moscow hotel room bleeding secrets,” all reeled off at a ferocious pace.
If you try hard enough to stitch a plot together you can just about decipher that Man is a sniper with his high-velocity rifle trained on a protester he is falling for, while Woman is a graphic designer for a monolithic multinational who cannot escape the lucid horror of the imagery on the daily news.
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
