Mary Said What She Said – Isabelle Huppert/Barbican 2024

Yes and yes again.

I’m going to dream about Mary Fleming, Mary Beton, Mary Livingstone and Mary Seton.

OMG we both posted at the same time

😂😂😂

Which one liked the jewels

I can’t recall even though she told us 59 million times

🫣

Fleming was miserable.
Beton was jewels.
Livingstone was (something?).
Seton was fave.

😅

She’s one of my all time favourite actresses, and her strength is VERY MUCH in her stillness. Something like the Piano Teacher, her physical and emotional stoicism in that is what makes it a masterpiece (IMO).

No surprise to me then, that the better parts of this (again, IMO) were those when she was still and not performing those awful mechanical movement sequences.

No I didn’t! It’s her in The Maids with Cate Blanchett that I really regret missing.

This was utter purgatory. From just a few minutes in, I was willing it to end. This is pseudo-intellectual rubbish, entirely devoid of any merit. There is certainly no entertainment value, but also nothing of educational benefit. The translated script lacks any poetical artistry.

Without any explanation, the performance start was delayed ten minutes. For the next ten, Madame Huppert was in darkness at the rear of the stage taking an eternity to rotate 180 degrees to face us. The dialogue -- about 75% live and 25% pre-recorded -- is all French and from Huppert, apart from a small section on the soundtrack in English.

From the centre of stalls row C, I had the choice of surtitles high above the proscenium, or to the left or right. None were comfortable to look at easily, and I shifted between the options to avoid neck strain. Huppert delivers lines at such breakneck speed, that it's frequently impossible to keep up with the displayed words. A two-line sentence might appear for less than a second.

Whereas movie subtitles and the normal pace of dialogue allow one's eyes to flit back and forth between text and image, here one is rooted to reading, with rare glances at the stage only when there is the occasional pause in speech. This is no great loss, because the actress is frequently static, and when she moves, it is with bizarre hand gestures and frantic pacing back and forth on a loop that suggest she might be a malfunctioning automaton rather than a lauded thespian.

Whoever was responsible for the lighting design -- and, quelle surprise, it turns out to be Robert Wilson, the director and creator of this garbage -- has a particularly sadistic streak. We are forced to endure two stage-wide strips of brilliant white lighting at floor level, marking the front and back of the space. Even though I was mainly focused on surtitle watching, I was having to contend with little white lines burnt into my retina from the infrequent peeks towards Huppert. And just as those were starting to dissipate, the illumination of the rear wall would be suddenly cranked up to blind you properly.

The music soundtrack is meant to stir, but does so with such little subtlety that the effect is excessively melodramatic, as if this were a lampoon of bad experimental theatre rather than a show setting out to be completely serious.

Incredibly, there were four minutes of applause and well-supported ovation. I'd like to think that others had somehow managed to glean a worthiness beyond my capability, but I rather suspect it a performative display.

One star.

One act: 19:55-21:24
including 4 minutes of applause and ovation

Ticket available on noticeboard for tomorrow. Front row stalls.
DM if interested.

4.5 stars from The Reviews Hub, although it does acknowledge "However, it’s not an easy watch, especially at the beginning when surtitles – it’s performed in French – flash by so quickly it’s tough to keep up." and "In the opening 20 minutes or so, it seems as if Wilson’s show will drag on forever, "
www.thereviewshub.com/mary-said-what-she-said-barbican-london/

1) Inverted commas on "reviewing" is plain rude.

2) I prefer to judge work based on personal experience rather than pre-judge. The marketing material made it sound like it was right up my street. If I was risk-averse and always avoided stuff that sounded challenging or not for me, I would have missed out on some wonderful theatre over the years.

Saw the matinee, and it felt like the best ever exhibit at the Tate Modern, rather than an entertainment.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Duly warned by this thread, I was kicking myself for buying the cheapest Stalls Seats (Row B), which in the past provided excellent access to surtitles in various Van Hove's and whatnot.

So, given that everyone was still waiting to go in at 2:40pm, I joined the very back of the queue, so as to go in last, and noted as I walked in that Row R of the Stalls was almost completely empty, so I just went in there instead.

From there, the surtitles were easy to see and, as Parsley said, it became clear that alot of it is repetition.

That makes perfect sense because this is really an art exhibit "The Confined Queen loses her marbles," and repetition is a big part of that. I remember, for example, how the polar bears at Bristol Zoo, years ago, just paced back and forth, banging their heads against the walls, completely insane, like mechanical cuckoo clocks more than living creatures.

Huppert goes through lots of insane moods, repeating her babbling words about Mary Seton (as the surtitles spelled it) being her bestie, and Mary Fleming being a grump, in silhouette, beaming, dour, with a rictus grin, cackling, rasping like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

She rages about savagery and abuse and betrayal, before constantly slipping back into her world of the 4 other Marys.

She stretches her arms as if to fly, like a caged bird with clipped wings, does her merry dance going nowhere, then her not-so-merry dance, then she imagines herself to be brightly cheerily floating in the clouds, but always the darkness and the repetition return, and she looks more and more desperate and robotic.

The stillness of Huppert's trapped silhouette, which brightens to reveal an overly bright unnatural forced smile, followed by all her repetitive unnatural behaviour, was all quite brilliantly done.

If there is anywhere you expect a theatre show to be experimental, like an art exhibit, its the Barbican, and I was doubly warned by this thread lol.

So that said, as a drama, this is 1 star, as an art exhibit, it's 5 stars. Overall, from me, 4 stars, as imprisonment and madness are states I can only bear for so long, and once you get the hang if it, you get the hang of it.

It lacks the Sarah Kane type unexpected eccentricity and extremism of the Phaedra thing Huppert did, that Parsley mentioned, where your mind boggles at what you're watching, and which was more up my street.