Deathwatch

This is a knotty, dense play from the legendary French playwright Jean Genet, and it left me with one question: what the bobbins just happened? 

Genet is getting about a bit at the moment (even though he is dead) – Trafalgar Studios is currently hosting a starry production of his better-known ‘The Maids’. The Print Room’s version of ‘Deathwatch’, his first play, plonks a cell in the middle of the stage and traps the three protagonists in there for the majority of the show’s 75 minutes. Petty criminals Lefranc and Maurice jostle for the attention of murderer Green-Eyes who, they think, is king of the prison. And he kind of is, because he has the power to manipulate the other two in pretty intense ways. 

The night belongs to Tom Varey as Green-Eyes, who has some extraordinary speeches to work with. The play is anchored by an incredible monologue in which he lists all the things he tried to be so that he wouldn’t be a murderer. ‘I even tried to be a rose,’ he says.

The play itself feels a bit off. Genet shows that corrupt figures like Green-Eyes can have an intoxicating kind of allure, but in doing so he glamorises violence in a way that feels regressive. Even more so when you consider that the violence is towards women, and the play makes a point of forcing its women to be silent or invisible. Sure, that sort of thing may be par for the course with this kind of material; it’s an old play about seductive masculinity, a wobbly power structure and the preservation of self. But it feels so irrelevant and inaccessible as a piece of writing that it’s hard to understand why someone would choose to put it on in 2016.

If you’re into this kind of stuff, this production will suit you well. It’s slick and has some great performances. But if you’re not, it’s a pretty hard-going evening of an intellectual dude thinking some things that almost certainly won’t apply to your life.

BY: TESSIE JOHNSON