LUNGS (Old Vic in Camera)*****

 

By Cal

Link: https://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2021/old-vic-in-camera/in-camera-playback-lungs

Available until: Livestreams at 7.30pm on Thursday 28^th and Friday 29^th January.

Lungs was first performed at the Old Vic in late 2019, starring Matt Smith and Claire Foy. They were set to reprise their roles in New York in March 2020. We all know why that didn’t happen. But in June, the production was performed live in an empty Old Vic to a virtual audience and now the Old Vic are giving us three more showings of this incredible play from the livestream recordings.

Lungs tells the story of a couple. When the play begins, they’re quite established as a couple. They’ve reached an age where a lot of people who don’t have children already are thinking of having them. They’re feeling the pressure; feeling they ought to be doing the same. They’re also feeling the pressure to be environmentally friendly. Every conversation becomes an argument. Everything that should be fun becomes a stress.

The play is very funny, but it’s also very sad. The two characters, identified only as Him and Her in the captions (though I believe the script calls them M and V) have a strong and powerful connection. They finish each other’s sentences. They understand one another, perhaps better than they understand themselves. They have so much potential to be good together… but they can’t stop arguing. Every comment becomes a criticism. Every criticism becomes an argument. They’re both wound so tightly, it only takes one word or even one look from one to cause the other to snap.

It’s the kind of play that could be painfully uncomfortable to watch – and in a way, it is. But it’s not a production that makes you want to look away. You just want to keep watching; to find out what happens next. And to root for this couple with everything you’ve got… because they could be so good together. If only things didn’t keep going wrong.

The actors social distance from each other, each with their own camera that focuses on them throughout. Sometimes you see them in each other’s cameras, but usually not. There are references to physical contact within the script and they haven’t been removed (maybe there’s some legal reason why they couldn’t be), but it doesn’t matter. It’s probably partly that we accept that it would be dangerous for actors to touch and it no longer seems strange that they don’t. Just as we can suspend our belief enough to imagine that two actors in bed together really are having sex, we can also imagine that these two characters have touched or kissed or whatever the script says they’ve done.

But it also works because, in this play, physical contact doesn’t seem that important. It’s about the characters’ heads and hearts, not their bodies. Whether they hug or kiss for real isn’t important. It’s all about processing what they’ve just said… and wondering with some trepidation how they will hurt each other next.

In some ways, the play might even be stronger without the physical contact. One notable feature of Duncan Macmillan’s play is the speed of it. It’s one speech after another, overlapping. The characters barely give each other the chance to stop and think – which means they don’t give the audience a chance either. The words keep coming and so do the emotions. If you feel a bit emotionally battered after watching this performance, you are not alone! Although it’s impossible to judge without having seen the play, a hug might reduce the speed, not to mention the tension. It might soothe the pain of the barbed words. While this might be what we – and certainly the characters – crave, it feels right not to have this reassurance. This play isn’t about the idea that everything is going to be okay. This play is the fact that sometimes love can hurt so much, you can barely breathe, and no matter how much you might want to make everything right, you very often can’t.

Claire Foy and Matt Smith have a brilliant onstage connection and there feels like a strong level of trust between them which really allows them both to go for it. Claire is prickly and snappy as Her, flinging hurtful accusations around to offset the emotions she is feeling, but there’s something so fearful and vulnerable about her and such a strong sense of the emotional pain she’s in, she becomes a much more sympathetic character than she might have been. Her is the kind of person (I can’t believe I’ve just written a sentence beginning ‘Her is’!) who speaks all her thoughts aloud, all jumbled and probably a great deal more strongly than she really means, but Claire delivers the words beautifully, finding the sense in them, as well as the emotion.

Matt plays Him as much less of a talker. The type who’ll shout out his angry emotions when he’s pushed so far, but not someone who’ll discuss his emotions by choice. Matt manages to convey both the discomfort many men feel in this situation but also the sense that there are emotions there under the surface. His mistakes are often in actions rather than words, but Him still has the ability to cause Her hurt and pain, and to feel it too.

It’s a great play for our socially distant times. But it’s also just a great play.