Theatre review: 'Trying it on' @ Birmingham REP 12/06/18

An edited version of this review was published on the National Student website on the 18th Jun 18

Trying It On, a new one-man-show by David Edgar which attempts to is not entirely good theatre. Certainly not in the traditional sense of the slick professionalism we’re used to on the modern stage. There are moments that were jarring and awkward, or moments where Edgar took pauses which were perhaps a little too long to regain his place in the story, with the aid of a prompt. It’s not slick, it’s slow and stumbling, but what it is is honest.

The faltering nature is perhaps a reflection of its source material – we were frequently vox-popped along the lines of those over- and under 47 (for purposes as political as you can imagine). Likewise, while the set is nice, the interactions with it are simple and performative (not in the duplicitous sense), but this is the point somehow. The performance is honest, candid, and this closeness to or confidence in the audience allows nuance that an arm’s-length performance wouldn’t.

It’s an intriguing exploration of the generation who dreamed of revolution in 1968 but to varying degrees abandoned it by the current day. A clever device in this involves talking to a recorded voice through a microphone – Edgar’s 20-year-old past-self who reacts in horror at some of the more bourgeois successes of his 70-year-old self – and a key concern of the play is the extent to which we should be allowed to betray our old beliefs or disown or old selves.

There is a clear blurring of line between David Edgar as self and as character, what are the preoccupations of the man and what are the preoccupations of the drama – fittingly, as how much a person can live through the drama they create is an issue in the ‘play’ which begins with the line “if this were a play”. The ‘play’ is mostly just Edgar talking, to the audience and to himself, but it’s witty, funny, affable, self-aware.

‘Trying it on’ crosses genres – lecture, sermon (but never too preachy), stand-up, autobiography, interview, and documentary to fascinatingly inertia-inducing effect, so that we can never be sure in what mode and to what degree of remove we are being addressed. In this, it makes good use of soundbites from video interviews, including projection. It’s also playfully metatheatrical, as with the opening apostrophe ‘if this were a play’. At multiple times he makes direct reference to his tech, and, for a joke, to the scrolling script from which he refinds his place – “don’t turn round!”. The vox pops are actually interesting in this way as they turn the audience into a strange immersive performance of the political views of a theatrical audience. We seem to be the butt of some of his jokes, and uncomfortably complicit in some unsettling revelations.

Edgar makes comments about his own limitations to portray other points of view in the piece, and indirectly but troublingly challenges the ability of the audience to assume understanding of other points of view. In acknowledging that it has limitations and prejudices, it invites the audience to question their own limitations and prejudices. It isn’t necessarily good theatre, but in the interesting times in which we live, this kind of self-exploratory drama is essential, not least because it does have some optimism to depart.