Jermyn Street theatre, London
This fantasy ceremony for the modernist couple is too preoccupied with the famous men cavorting around them
Attempting to combine absurdist farce, genuine tragedy and an ocean of research, Edward Einhorn’s sweet but unsatisfying play imagines a Jewish wedding for the famous modernist couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. With the dialogue looping and careening akin to the way that Stein wrote, Einhorn’s play purports to be about these two remarkable women and the love between them, but the script is far more preoccupied by the idiosyncrasies of the famous men cavorting around the pair.
In 1933, Stein published The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, about and supposedly by the love of her life. Here, Einhorn toys with authorial voice, with Stein as our narrator. She addresses us directly, Natasha Byrne playing the writer with a stern certainty, introducing each scene and the characters that our four-strong cast are pretending to be in that moment. As they roll through the greats of modernism attending their fantasy wedding – Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Alfred North Whitehead, all well-performed but shallow caricatures – the show quickly takes on the guise of an amateur improv skit.
At Jermyn Street theatre, London, until 16 April
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