| Description |
A formidable piece of black theatre, hammering away at the harshness of the human condition and offering no answers to its questions. It began in darkness, and heart-beat-paced drumming,then lightened enough to reveal a dreary cellar, shaped with hevy, grubby wooden beams and squalid corners. Edward Moore's grim set, seemingly lit by a single skylight, contributed admirably to the mood throughout. Here, two obviously male figures dressed as nuns are drinking, eating, arguing and simply waiting. The first major weirdness arises in identity: these men have put on nuns' clothes to further some plot, seldom try to hide their masculine traits, yet have so soaked themselves in their roles that they never speak to, or of, each other except as Mother Superior, Sister Angela, 'he' or 'she'. For the brutal-faced, cigar-smoking Sister Angela this seems little more than a savage joke. For the more intellectualising Mother Superior, who has been busy deceiving others in the outside world, it has gone much further in merging role into identity, and in shutting out harsh realities from her consciousness as much as possible…. A programme note tells us the action occurs in Haiti in 1804, at the time when the Negroes are rebelling against their French rulers; yet these are civilised cruelties. A third nun, Sister Inez, performs little duties for the others in response to physical signs; for she's had her tongue cut out because she spoke too much, and her hearing deliberately destroyed. … Presently, we witness the arrival of the person awaited, the Senora, an attractive noblewoman in travelling-clothes, carrying a box of jewels. Scared by the Mother Superior's depiction of the horrors of a Negro revolt, she trusts in the nuns to smuggle her to safety. … A few minutes later, … Sister Angela, given all the dirty work as usual,strangles her. The fantasy ofa Negro revolt becomes real, and the criminals are trapped. |
Event
Provide feedback on The Nuns