Lunch and the Bow of Ulysses
by Seven Berkoff.
A double bill At the Trafalgar Studios.
It is an early angry work by Berkoff about the hatefulness and violence of sexual partnerships.
The man is a salesman a seller of space –of nothingness. He needs to have a something and in his mind violently attacks the woman a – housewife sitting on a bench on the pier. He sees his victim and has an animal like spasm of desire which he expresses in blisteringly violent words and over the top actions – all of which are not shown to the woman, who is sitting still, hardly moving, probably dreaming of an imaginary relationship.
All men are salesmen when it comes to seduction. He is deceitful and erotic telling her that she wants him. When she speaks, her words seem like an attempt to escape him and intrigue him at the same time. The purity of his passion leaves his soul hanging open for us to see at all times, as they play a game of intellectual slapstick. With words that are often disgusting yet more often poetic, achingly beautiful and very funny. Showing his passion and feelings to the audience but all the while using deceit on her. It is almost unbearable to watch but it echoes a tragedy of life. ‘I star in my own melodrama a panoply of exquisite variations.’
Shaun Dooley builds up a picture of a man totally involved in his pursuit of sex with a woman – an attack that is simply in his mind – and the comedy comes when he actually begins to speak in an ingratiatingly normal tone. Emily Bruni counter attacks his deceit by telling of her ideal marriage with a loving, caring husband for whom she cares a great deal. ‘His hard masculine himness.’
She makes small, dainty little sexual movements, crossing of the legs, little hand movements. She looks as if she is waiting for something or maybe just looking out to sea.
What starts off an intellectual rape, becomes a mutual physical sex and leads eventually into a marriage between two miserable people who simply use each other. Each one thinking they are wasting their lives with each other. ‘I saved you from the meaninglessness the emptiness of space.’
In the second play they both talk about how they have wasted their lives being with each other. The man is highly resentful of the time he has spent with her. She believes that she has saved his life. That he could not have existed without her. It leads on to an almost unbearable relationship of mutual loathing.
It is not easy to conquer Berkoff’s verbose speeches, but these splendid actors work it beautifully.
This resurrection of one of Berkoff’s most brilliant pieces is beautifully directed by Nigel Harman.
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