What happens if, into the lives of an otherwise unexceptional middle-class family, you introduce an irritant in the shape of an artist of the most trying kind? Serge Haulupa (Steve John Shepherd) is one for whom life is art and everything, all human interaction, every detail of domestic routine, is grist to the mill, subjected to analysis and a relentless and wearing taxonomy. The family is the subject of his conceptual art project, manipulated, badgered and filmed. The result of this exhausting, invasive scrutiny is an excoriation of the outer, protective layer of social interaction to leave them, if not bent on mutual destruction, at least dismissive of the usual balms of married life.
The mother, Ulrike, (Charlotte Randle) an artist now working as assistant to Haulupa, displays all the middle-class angst we might find in any family in any western city, be it in Britain or Germany. For example, her concern that leaving money lying around may be construed as a test of honesty or of a careless and insensitive display of wealth to the au pair, Jessica (Ria Zmitrowicz) reveals a curious hierarchy of moral concern, with that (comical) social angst being juxtaposed with a coolness of concern over the plight of a disease ridden African state that husband Michael (Jonathan Slinger) has been offered the chance to help under the auspices of Medecins Sans Frontieres.
The father, a doctor, starved of physical contact from his wife and now in acute need of a cuddle from said au pair, suffers from his sense of self-worth having been shredded by the constant and debilitating nagging from his wife about everything from his love making to his housework. The couple’s stroppy teenage son (Brenock O’Connor) meanwhile, is beginning to exhibit signs of inappropriate sexual interest in the au pair tinged with a whiff of deviancy. Happily this turns out to be no more than an exploration of his own place on the spectrum of sexual orientation.
In the dissection of his quarry writer, Marius von Mayenberg (trans. Maja Zada) displays an Ayckbourn-like ear for his subjects’ milieu, but the cuts go deeper, the humour is more acerbic, the situations more revealing. The couple both get themselves into a right old pickle over how to broach the subject of body odour with Jessica, embarrassingly digging themselves by turns into a deeper and deeper hole as she remains uncomprehending and unfazed. Again the cuddle – which it turns out is being recorded by Serge – leads to embarrassment when some unexpected activity in his pyjama bottoms brings the moment to an abrupt end.
This is comedy of manners toughened up for the twenty first century. The tone is set by Jean Chan’s bleak modernist set against which, like animals pacing out their neuroses in an old fashioned zoo, the characters are paraded for our amusement. Direction from Mathew Dunster is deft, detailed and controlled with a wry yet sympathetic humour perfectly suited to the scenario.
The Ustinov has done it again in presenting us with outstanding European theatre that deserves and ought to get, wider public recognition. ★★★★☆ Graham Wyles 28th February 2017
