Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle

Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle

***

Wyndham's Theatre

It's UK premiere, brought to London by director Marianne Elliott and playwright Simon Stephens, both of NT's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle is absolutely true to the principle on which it is based; the observation of chance meeting between Georgie and Alex sparks a plethora of events, impossible to predict.

What started as an awkward watch, full of brief, sullen silences turned into an evening of continuous laughs and heart wrenching confessions. 42-year-old Georgie Burns (Anne-Marie Duff), an American pathological liar, and 75-year-old butcher Alex Priest (Kenneth Cranham), meet by chance on a train station platform, and thus begin an unintentional whirlwind friendship. Both are solitary individuals who are circumstantially alone in the universe; the play dips into their world on a weekly basis, giving the audience the highlights (or rather, lowlights) of their time together. From one meeting to the next, it is impossible to predict how their story will conclude, but their journey is honest, moving and at times a little eccentric, relinquishing fear of death and igniting sparks of joy into two rather sad and lonely lives.

The relationship Duff and Cranham brought to the stage is hard to pinpoint; their friendship was heartwarming, funny and crude, and sometimes sexual. Due to the parent/child-sized age gap, it should have been an uncomfortable watch, but they masterfully saw beyond the romanticism of a couple and created a relationship based on Alex’s philosophy: doing, not feeling.

At first, I found Duff hard to grasp. Her character is wistful and fast thinking, with very little filter between her brain and her mouth. There didn’t seem to be any meaning to what she was saying, other than to fill the peace left by Cranham’s quick and succinct dialogue, however as the play progressed it became clear that she lies and speaks at such an alarming rate to stop people from leaving her. If she’s more interesting, more fun or more engaging, she won’t have to be so alone.

Kenneth Cranham’s handling of Simon Stephen’s text was beautifully subtle and charming, and he brought an astonishing focus and truth to the role on a remarkable level. Far more normalised than Duff, Cranham was warm and instantly likable. It was no far stretch of the imagination that he was an idolatry man so set in his routine that anything beyond his normal day was an unnecessary effort in his life. It was so refreshing to see an older person physically unphased by their age; Cranham was as spritely as Duff, and his age would have never come into question had it not been a running joke throughout.

Bunny Christie's design is as masterful as her work on Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and People, Places, and Things; the set is bare, crystal white with moving walls and furniture rising from the ground as and when required. With Paule Constable's lighting and Ian Dickson's sound design, the atmosphere was futuristic, sharp and clean-cut, complementing Elliott's vision perfectly.  

The intricacies of Steven Hoggart's movement direction, along with the ever-changing set, was impressive, to say the least. Not a foot was out of place as benches disappeared from below Duff, suddenly encompassing her between two narrowing walls, or Cranham standing in a spartan room to being trapped between the approaching furniture, stopping just before he's hit. Hoggart's choreography also signaled the passing of time, the weeks in between their meetings, creating sequences that turn their daily routines into more of a hallucinogenic dance.

Although the style of the piece took a little while for me to get my head around (we didn't have all of this mechanical stuff in my day), the story of these two lost souls was uplifting and hopeful, and I would love to have seen more of their unpredictable adventures.

NG x