Six Characters In Search Of An Author (Minerva Theatre, Chichester)

Fans of oddball 20th-century Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello (a small group) may enjoy the ostentatiously muddled, cacophonous, bizarre, swankily intellectual version of his Six Characters in Chichester.

Other mortals may prefer to give it a miss as wide as the Channel.

I haven't come so close to refusing to return for a second half of a show since a silly production about Judas Iscariot at London's Almeida a couple of months ago. 

Muddled and cryptic: Eleanor David, Ian McDiarmid and Denise Gough in Six Characters

That was directed by Rupert Goold, hailed by some (count me out) as the best prospect in British theatre. And surprise, surprise, Mr Goold directs here, too.

Pirandello's conceit centres on six fictitious characters who have failed to find a dramatic outlet and are accordingly bent on mischief.

In this version, the characters pester a documentary film-maker who is struggling to make a programme about a Danish euthanasia clinic.

The documentary maker (Noma Dumezweni) has goofed. She has failed to secure some much-needed factual footage. She is therefore tempted to dramatise some scenes. 

Enter the six characters, led by a horror-story Father (Ian McDiarmid), offering their talents.

Every show directed by Mr Goold that I have seen has been littered with gimmicky cliches, and this is no exception.

There are cameras on stage which relay images to various screens. There is ambient noise of the 'something nasty's going to happen soon' variety.

Quite often the screens are filled with snowstorms. Plenty of stage blood, haunting echoes, a post-industrial warehouse setting, a girl on a single roller skate. That type of yawn.

Mr McDiarmid has a mesmerising voice, deep and dripping. He is a proper talent, but here he just plays a two- dimensional weirdo  -  which I suppose is what his character is.

He is matched by Denise Gough, who plays the Father's vampish step- daughter and lover, attired in a Clockwork Orange- style bowler hat and skimpy dress. With this facescrunching performance she could corner the market in psycho-drama sex fiends.

One or two scenes work well  -  one involves a fish tank, but I won't give away the surprise.

In another, the documentary maker wanders out of the Minerva Theatre and we see her crossing the road outside and entering Chichester's other theatre, walking on to the stage of the musical which is playing there. his is, indeed, a memorable moment but by this point I was totally confused about her mental condition.

I suppose the play raises some muddy questions about identity, but in such a cryptic manner that many Sussex theatregoers will be disinclined to bother to work it out.

There is a wanton cruelty not only about Pirandello's modernist oddness, but also in the way Mr Goold and his collaborator Ben Power have adapted the work.

Some scenes towards the end satirising modern theatre suggest we are not meant to take any of it seriously. Just as well, really.

For most of this show you will need a PhD in quadruple Dutch, or maybe Danish, as directorial self-glorification is placed way above audience comprehension.

More tommyrot than in the trenches.

Verdict: Watch out Sussex

*****