Sydney Reviews

Simon Stone's Strange Interlude strikes a curious balance between being incredibly intellectually stimulating and almost completely un-engaging emotionally. Considering the subject matter – love, death, abortion, adultery – this total lack of emotional oomph is so remarkable that I have to think it's deliberate. What I don't quite understand is why.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, here is a brief summary: Nina (Emily Barclay), heartbroken after her fiancé dies two days before a ceasefire in a war, tries to fill the void left in her heart in different ways with three different men – affable, seemingly harmless Sam (Toby Truslove), emotionally detached but desperately lonely Ned (Toby Schmitz), and Charlie (Mitchell Butel), best-selling author and friend of her father who has lusted after her from a young age. Nina believes that having a child will help her rebuild her life and mend her broken heart, but even that turns out to be more complicated than she bargained for.

The Strange Interlude that Belvoir gives us is not the Strange Interlude that won Eugene O'Neill the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. Given that this version is both directed by and written (after O'Neill) by Simon Stone, this is not surprising. Stone is hardly known for being by-the-book faithful to the texts he takes on. He has incredible skill not so much as an adaptor, but as a distiller of texts – he has a gift for finding the essence of texts and reworking (and usually completely rewriting) them so as to best portray them on the stage. Strange Interlude is no exception to the Simon Stone rule. While O'Neill's sweeping multi-act structure remains, as well as the 'strange interlude' device that sees the characters interrupting their own thoughts and conversations to soliloquise to the audience, precious few of O'Neill's words remain. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. While O'Neill purists might rage at this reinterpretation and reimagination of O'Neill's voice, I feel like Stone did a fantastic job of modernising the script and conveying the elemental meanings behind it. (While there were a few bizarrely unnecessary monologues about sex, especially from Charlie, Stone is certainly, if nothing else, funnier than O'Neill.) What I missed was, to use a term borrowed from reality TV, the wow factor. Several of Stone's previous productions (The Wild Duck and Thyestes spring to mind) have been mind-blowing. With Strange Interlude, my mind remained unblown.

There was no point at which this play was dull. However, I left it emotionally unaffected. Perhaps this was by design – maybe the audience was supposed to mimic Nina's emotional state: she declares at one point that she can't feel anything, and at the end of the play, that was certainly how I felt. This is not to say that there are not moments of exquisite brilliance, because there are: the sublime performances of Toby Schmitz and Toby Truslove, the amazingly effective scene conducted almost wholly in a shower cubicle, the reimagination of the ending. However, I felt like this Strange Interlude was not more than the sum of its parts. There are strange interludes from it that are going to stay with me for a very long time, but as a whole, Strange Interlude left me cold.


Belvoir presents
Strange Interlude
by Simon Stone | after Eugene O'Neill

Director Simon Stone

Venue: Belvoir St Theatre | 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
Dates: 5 May – 17 June 2012
Times: Tuesday 6.30pm | Wednesday to Friday 8pm | Saturday 2pm & 8pm | Sunday 5pm
Tickets: Full $62 | Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) $52 | Concession $42
Bookings: 02 9699 3444 | www.belvoir.com.au