Incognito

It looks like I’m going to a lone voice again, as I fail to join in the euphoria for this new Nick Payne play. It’s a bit of a Stoppardian affair, both slick and somewhat glib, but unlike Stoppard doesn’t really go anywhere. I left the theatre thinking ‘so what?’

Three narratives interweave – the story of the American pathologist who stole Einstein’s brain in the hope of learning where genius comes from, a man who’s brain is damaged after botched surgery for his epilepsy and a neuroscientist and her relationships and her challenging views on the brain. This latter thread is the weakest.

It’s all very well staged by Joe Murphy in a traverse setting underneath a geometric web of chrome tubes, with a piano at each side. You can’t fault the four actors who play multiple roles, with switches seemingly faster as the pay goes on.

At first I admired the cleverness, the stagecraft and the performances, but I tired of it. It came to seem self-indulgent, an intellectual exercise that exists for itself rather than to illuminate or entertain. In the end, I just didn’t see the point of it. Then again, maybe I’m just thick.