OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, 27 April 2008

Picasso and Me (www.mikemaran.com)

DIRECTED by Patrick Sandford and written by lead actor Mike Maran, Picasso and Me is a wonderful premise for a play. A boy hitchhiking in 1960’s Southern France gets a lift from a photographer on his way to Picasso’s studio, becomes the photographer’s assistant for the day and has his portrait painted by the artist.

In the present day and in the first scene of Act 1 the boy, now 58 years old, finds the portrait in a shop in Paris. The memories it conjures become intertwined with his own relationship with his father and sons, linked to the photographer’s themed study of Picasso’s paintings years earlier.

The writing and narrative shifts back and forth through time in a fragmentary and at times disorientating fashion. Although Maran is an amiable storyteller there isn’t enough characterisation here to make each element of the story emerge convincingly. As a consequence what might have been developed as engaging counterpoint between the various stories, voices and life experience becomes something of a blunt instrument.

There is a feeling that here is an actor playing himself working through his own father/son issues. With regards to Picasso, although, there is a steady stream of information about the artist throughout the play, it lacks insight both in terms of art and human relationships.

The focus of this play is entirely revealed in its title and ultimately I found Picasso and Me self-indulgent, repetitive and dull. The reference to the infamous US Iraq war press conference, where ‘Guernica’ was covered by a blue curtain so it wouldn’t “confuse” television viewers, is powerful inspiration for a very different play – here it just felt like a topical inclusion.

Picasso as an iconic figure, his relationship with his father and sons and the potential for the narrator’s stories to convincingly connect in a meaningful way are not fully realised by the writing. There was far more potential for intersection of human experience through time to communicate and articulate truths about that experience historically, socially and personally.

Juliet Shillingford’s stage design with its collage-like arrangement of interlocking forms from Picasso’s paintings, recede spatially in light and shadow and interpret the play’s theme to good effect. This, together with Karen Wimhurst’s original music, functioned extremely well, like stepping into the open frame on the easel downstage, into imagination and memory.

It was a shame (and not without irony) that the depth of the original writing did not follow the path of the design in this respect. The way that art and artefact from the narrative are combined on stage is one of the production’s main strengths.

Judging by the applause there seemed to be plenty of other people in the audience who did enjoy Picasso and Me, buoyed perhaps by the uplifting ending which suggests the father reunited with the son and the familiarity of local references. I’m afraid I was unmoved and unchanged by the whole experience. Despite the potential for exploration of intersections of human behaviour, the essential relationship between parent and child or father and son, famous or familiar, still begs further exploration in the theatre.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

Links

• Mike Maran