Wrecks - Neil LaBute

[Stuart Murdoch]

Looking forward to this.
At the Everyman starting on the 23rd, I think.

Been trying to get some of his movies to rent in town.
Not a fucking chance.

[Stuart Murdoch]

Had to buy Your Friends & Neighbours.

Worth it. Great flick.

[Jim Comic]

got me tix on sat, should be good.

[Langer Dan]

got my tickets today, really looking forward to it, what night are ye going?

[Jim Comic]

tuesday 29th i think

[Langer Dan]

tuesday 29th i think

rightyho, im going on friday 2nd, 4 rows from the front, really looking forward to it.


La Bute is a class act. I really enjoyed, In the company of men, your friends and Neighbours and the shape of things.

Should be good, no spoilers from the tuesday show, please.

[Langer Dan]

This is my I've-had-tickets-to-Wrecks-for-weeks-and-am-feeling-very-smug post. There is never gonna be another event like this at the Everyman. One of the best actors alive (how great was A History of Violence?) and a fabulous (and pretty fucked-up as anyone who's seen Your Friends & Neighbours) writer/director. There is no excuse for people missing this.

pretty much. World premiere in Cork.

yaaay!

[Jim Comic]

betcha it turns out that ed harris killed his wife and the play is set in shawshank but that he takes solace in his study of birds, then escapes by building a raft, swims through a tunnel of shit and his best friend is a black irishman whose nickname is 'red'.

[Jim Comic]

Is your nickname meant to be so ironic?

yes, yes it is

[Jim Comic]

Is your nickname meant to be so ironic?

i notice you haven't disproved my hypothesis

[Jim Comic]

(I think you've mistaken Ed Harris for Tim Robbins to start with).


and clint eastwood
and burt lancaster
etc, etc

[Langer Dan]

betcha it turns out that ed harris killed his wife and the play is set in shawshank but that he takes solace in his study of birds, then escapes by building a raft, swims through a tunnel of shit and his best friend is a black irishman whose nickname is 'red'.

quality!

[northsidescumbag]

I was disappointed slightly.

[Laslo Panaflex]

I saw it on Monday night. It's stunning altogether, and what a performance

[Stuart Murdoch]

From The Dublin Times;
Neil LaBute's popularity in the Irish theatre, which culminates with the world premiere of his new play, Wrecks, as part of Cork 2005, is easily explained, writes Fintan O'Toole.


In spite of his Hollywood credentials and harsh, almost misanthropic vision, he is essentially an old-fashioned literary playwright whose work sits easily alongside that of, say, Conor McPherson or Mark O'Rowe. His plays are driven by a sensitivity to verbal language on the one side and an almost obsessive concern for plot on the other. The former is his great strength, the latter a fatal temptation, and both are fully expressed in Wrecks.

With one actor and a playing time of 65 minutes, Wrecks is not a major work. Neither, for LaBute, is it a big departure. Wrecks is, in fact, strikingly reminiscent of an earlier play, Medea Redux, which formed part of the bash trilogy. Each is a monologue performed initially by a screen star - Calista Flockhart in Medea Redux, the brilliant Ed Harris in Wrecks. Each is narrated by a compulsive smoker who disavows a capacity for eloquence: Flockhart's character began by making it clear that "I was never this major talker or anything", while Harris warns us that "I don't have a touch of the poet in me". Each is governed by Greek myth - in the case of Wrecks, the punning title gives us a none too subtle hint of what the final plot twist will be.

That obedience to a mythic story is in fact one of the inherent weaknesses of the monologue form. In the absence of drama, the difficulty of finding an ending with sufficient impact encourages a leap into sensationalism. Here, the crudeness of the plotting is somewhat offset by the fact that its very predictability allows you to discount it in advance and concentrate on Harris's marvellous capacity to inhabit LaBute's beautifully spare and elegantly constructed syntax. Though he hasn't appeared on stage for almost a decade, Harris has the complete control that makes you trust him implicitly before he even opens his mouth.

We meet Harris's Ed Carr in a funeral home, beside his wife's coffin, and are to understand that, while he talks confidentially to us, his more restrained public self is greeting the mourners. Harris has the complex, apparently contradictory presence that makes an actor a star. The chiselled, Mount Rushmore features and the hard, sceptical eye he turns on the audience make him completely convincing as a Midwestern, middle-aged man who has made money in the car-hire business after a childhood in orphanages and a spell in the navy in Vietnam. But he also holds himself with a wiry dignity and moves with an easy grace. You believe his nostalgia for the kind of manliness that he defines by "chivalry and proper thoughts and holding a door open for a lady". And you buy the image of his marriage he wants to sell: his complete, tender, all-encompassing devotion to the wife he met when she was 40 and he was 25.

LaBute, who also directs, gives him a nicely comic line in linguistic self-awareness, making him catch himself in the act of using words such as "indeed" and "appropriate" that do not feel at home in his mouth. Harris gets inside LaBute's language, capturing the reticence behind its revelations, revelling in the way it holds its shape even as it loops off into digressions about Shirley Temple's childhood, Oprah's use of words or the wonders of a 1961 Buick. He allows it to pick up the frequencies of a wider America that give latitude to the otherwise constrained form of a one-actor play.

The pity is that LaBute can't leave this elegant construction alone, or at least let its mythic resonances emerge with some sense of subtlety or ambiguity. As with much of his work, something makes him distrust his own capacity to create more open, lingering images, and he closes Wrecks down with a heavy-handed attempt at shock and awe. If he ever trusts himself enough to leave things unsaid, the feel for language and for acting that are so wonderfully evident here may make him great.

Runs until Dec 3

[Jim Comic]

thought the script was a bit clunky/forced towards the end but ed was great though as he gets older he's resembling skeltor more and more.... and those eyes, my god those eyes, well spooky!

[conor a]

yeah, in short riveting performance, opinion will obviously be divided on the "twist" in the script, and the script in general maybe - for me it worked well

[Mick]

saw it tuesday. "Alright" would be the best i could muster up for it. Apart from all the noise outside which completely wrecked harris' head for a while, i just didn't think it was that amazing.

[couldnthinkofaname]

thought it was good enough- ambulance was outside for 10 mins really pissing him off though some actor though able to hold it together perfectly for an hour solo

[conor a]

thought it was good enough- ambulance was outside for 10 mins really pissing him off though some actor though able to hold it together perfectly for an hour solo


exactly. i wasn't there the night of the ambulance but it was all about presence and authority in the acting, the play was almost secondary.

[madtheory]

The play was secondary IMO! His acting was amazing, incredibly expressive. The "twist" at the end seemed gratuitous to me.

He has an impressive handshake and the most piercing eyes I have ever seen. Ed Harris- genuine star.

[madtheory]

thought the script was a bit clunky/forced towards the end but ed was great though as he gets older he's resembling skeltor more and more.... and those eyes, my god those eyes, well spooky!
LOL! I agree on all points. He does look like an alien, but the women are mad about him. It's his presence, and the eyes of course.

[Langer Dan]

saw it friday. Enjoyed it, very difficult to pull off a one man show, but Ed managed it.
Cool snakeskin boots too!

[Chelsea Hotel #2]

The play was secondary IMO! His acting was amazing, incredibly expressive. The "twist" at the end seemed gratuitous to me.

He has an impressive handshake and the most piercing eyes I have ever seen. Ed Harris- genuine star.


Agreed - It was all about the performance. Great to be able to see it premiere in Cork