Narcissistic posturings

Too much artist and not enough art. That’s one problem with Total Eclipse, Christopher Hampton’s play about the titans of French 19th-century poetry. Another is presentation. The show is done ‘in the round’ on a raised slipway between two banks of seats irradiated by the glare reflected from the stage. This is bonkers. The reason house lights are dimmed during a show is to create an atmosphere of anonymous intimacy in which every member of the audience can half-imagine that they’re watching the play alone. Doing it in the round kills that subtlety. You have to stare, through the shapes of the perambulating actors, at a wraparound panorama of unfamiliar faces. Now human faces are intensely interesting and I can never concentrate properly on a play in the round because I’m too busy studying the looks of boredom, impatience, exhaustion and (occasionally) artistic rapture inscribed on the features of those opposite. A good game is to identify middle-aged couples and to guess which partner bought the tickets (frequent gusts of over-loud laughter) and which partner was bullied into coming (dry chuckles and humourless smiles modulating into closed eyes and soft snores). But why am I reviewing the audience? Because they were a lot more entertaining than the entertainment.

To appreciate Hampton’s play you really need to master French 19th-century poetry first, and if like me you’re an ignoramus who always wants to spell Rimbaud Rambo you’ll find these characters extremely hard to like. Paul Verlaine is a smug, manipulative social climber who smacks his gorgeous young wife in the face and later abandons her and their baby son. Charming, eh? He starts a torrid affair with Rambo (whoops), an immature, self-admiring little thug who muses grandly about his position in world literature and heckles his fellow poets at their readings.