THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING
In Lucia Cox’s play One Hand Clapping, which she adapts from the 1961 Anthony Burgess novel and brings as director to 59E59 Theaters as part of their Brits Off Broadway Festival, Howard, a fastidious 30-ish used-car salesman with perfect photographic memory, uses his mental gift to win £1000 on a TV quiz show. He parlays that sum into a not-so-small fortune gambling, then insists that he and his wife Janet use the winnings to live life to the fullest—which translates into buying expensive clothes and travelling from their small English town down to London and then to America. But although Howard is a devoted husband and a decent human being, we sense that some hidden, perhaps sinister, motive lurks behind his desire to give his wife and himself a taste of the best of everything.
We are treated to a display of sound craftsmanship by director and cast on Meriel Pym’s excellent set, which at first glance—with its flowery wallpaper and antique TV sets—seems to be a realistic depiction of a cozy British flat, but which, on closer scrutiny, radiates a surreal and maniacal quality in line with Ms. Cox’s distinct, stylized vision. Yet on the whole the show—a sort of fable concerning society’s cultural and spiritual degradation at the hands of advertising, commercialism and globalization—is a dud.
Besides feeling a bit like old news, with much of the story narrated by Janet (Eve Burley), One Hand Clapping suffers from a critical lack of suspense; watching it feels like listening to a joke that takes nearly 80 minutes to set up—by the time we get to the climax there is no punch line that can save it. Everything we learn about the characters is spoon fed to us, and so while we can sympathize with their positions we never empathize with them as people, as we might have had we discovered their personalities through drama. Howard’s (Oliver Devoti) pessimistic views of society and of himself—though we can understand what he means—are never emotionally or intellectually convincing, which undermines the essence of the story: If the eccentric antagonist’s position is easily dismissible then he’s just a destructive nut, and what’s interesting about that? And Janet’s transformation at the end is so drastic that it’s almost as if this new Janet is from a different (and more entertaining) play.
Adam Urey rounds out the cast as both Redvers, a corny quiz show host, and Laddie, a rakish starving poet. With Richard Stott appearing on the TV screens.
photos by Emma Phillipson
One Hand Clapping
House of Orphans
59E59 Theaters
ends on May 31, 2015
for tickets, call (212) 753-5959 or visit www.59e59.org