Fringe 2011: The Interview at the OLT
There is something immensely satisfying about this meticulous three hander where every character is clearly defined and they each feed off the other to produce a smooth running stage dynamic.
Mr. Anderson (Dan Baran) finds himself in an “interview” room in a police station, sitting between the impatient, no nonsense , let’s get this thing wrapped up style of detective played by Michael Kennedy, and the more thoughtful, brooding, perceptive detective Smith played by Ken Godmere.
The focus of their attention and ours is on the older Anderson being questioned in a case of murder. A certain man was found dead in a nursing home and Anderson was his roommate, He is therefore the prime suspect or perhaps the only witness. What did he see? What happened? That is what they want to find out. The play begins in the middle of the interview which has already begun. The perfect illustration of the slice of life drama.
The problem is that Anderson’s attention wanders. He begins with perfect clarity and then gets caught up in his own world, in his own reflexions, in his own train of thought, often not even hearing the questions being thrown at him. The old fellow also has images of TV crime programmes floating around in his head. He is not an easy person to interview because he can’t stay focussed.
We are immediately caught up in this world of partial truth and poetic confusion often not remotely related to the question at hand. The detectives are losing their cool but we are having a lot of fun watching both of them navigate around the obstacles that their suspect throws in their path.
Luckily, the real focus of this play is not necessarily to find out Anderson’s possible role in the murder. That situation is only a pretext driving this three way conversation. The real focus of the play is to see what strategies the detectives devise for best extracting information from this fellow who seems to produce rambling scenarios that are possibly the product of an elderly doddering mind. Or are they? Who is playing whom? That is the question.
The brooding, at times even sinister Smith/Godmere, starts the process with something close to a psychoanalytical style of delving into the past of Anderson’s life, before Kennedy takes over in his own more violent manner. Anderson lets slip important clues but are the detectives even listening to him? Aren’t they too busy trying to confirm their own preconceived ideas of what when down?
The dialogue becomes a mixture of all the communication weaknesses that human beings display even when they appear to be focussed on those around them. In the final moments, playwright Wilson leaves us sitting there slightly frustrated because police interrogations we see on TV always get their man. But this is theatre, not TV and avoiding the stereotypes of a well-constructed narrative is something that author Ken Wilson has done well.
The slightly unorthodox outcome of the interview is due to the fact that the author has chosen to show us a particular portion of the slice of life in question, not the whole pie. It will of course continue in the off stage time and space, at least we assume it will , but in the meantime, we have spent one hour watching a very interesting moment of theatre where the oh so versatile Dan Baran had us right in the palm of his hand, where Ken Godmere had all our sympathy and Michael Kennedy’s character (not the actor) got on our nerves. A perfect example of the so called “ fourth wall” of the neo-naturalist stage which worked exceptionally well, keeping us glued to the performance the whole time like a room full of voyeurs who couldn’t turn away. A piece of highly professional theatre and well worth the price of the ticket.
The Interview continues on the small stage of the Little Theatre.