Theatre
The Driver's Seat
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Neil Cooper
Four stars
When a young woman about to go on holiday finally reaches the end of her tether, her largely male colleagues indulge her, only laughing at her seemingly highly-strung antics once she's out of sight. So it goes for Lise, the enigmatic heroine of Muriel Spark's 1970 novella, a chronicle of a death foretold brought to life here in Laurie Sansom's adaptation for his own National Theatre of Scotland production.
Clad in vividly clashing candy-stripes as she takes a plane to an un-named European city, Morven Christie's Lise is forever in transit and in search of her own soul more than the potentially dangerous liaisons she never quite embarks on. As her movements are forensically mapped out and dissected by those left in her wake, an elusive, barely there portrait emerges, not just of Lise, but of a psychologically and sexually repressed society barely coping with its apparent new liberties.
All this is is played out by Sansom's cast of seven with cross-cutting fluidity on Ana Ines Jabares Pita's ever-changing set, which uses live filming to move between time and place with the fast-paced dexterity of an ice-cool prime time thriller. The mood is enhanced by Philip Pinsky's understated score, which is as much a product of its time as the story itself.
With Lise surrounded by the voguishly alternative post-1960s hangovers of macrobiotics, student protests and hippies dancing in the department store music section, an ever-prevailing misogyny drives every predatory male Lise brushes up against, as they take advantage of the era's touchy-feeliness even as they are confused and repelled by it. There is too a kind of trickle-down existential ennui which has left Lise and her generation disaffected and left with "the lack of an absence," as she puts it.
There is strong support here from the likes of Ryan Fletcher, Gabriel Quigley and Michael Thomson, but it is the steely, volatile and self-destructively manipulative presence of Lisa as brought to life so devastatingly by Christie that they pivot around in an alluringly elliptical study of self-invention and everyday madness.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article