Camden Theatre: Invitation to a Beheading

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The Review - THEATRE by HANNAH HUDSON
Published: 24 July 2008

Heads off to a first-rate adaptation of Nabokov

INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
Lion and Unicorn

A LUST for executions performed in public has been out of vogue in Britain since 1868. Perhaps that’s what makes Victor Sobchak’s Invitation to a Beheading – based on the novel by Nabokov, and performed at The Lion and Unicorn – so delightfully compelling.
The audience is invited to look in at the lonely prison cell of Cincinnatus – a prisoner awaiting death for a crime no one can really define.
He is surrounded by idiotic prison wardens and visited (albeit rarely) by his unfaithful wife and his alcoholic mother. He is denied the last remaining right of a prisoner – to know the day of his death. As per Nabokov, things are very strange indeed.
The play revels in the absurd and the gaudy with the omnipresent prison director and jailer (Avi Nassa and Daren-Luc Kelly) perpetually frustrating Cincinnatus’ attempts at logic.
Nassa’s Rodrig is convincing as a corrupt and sleaze-prone director, though the full sense of his authority is undermined by the constant interruptions from Kelly’s Rodin.
They torment and tease Cincinnatus (George Xander) – a man desperate to “feign translucence” in his own biography. His measured speech and considered movement are perfectly pitched to offer a jarring contrast with the dervish of the rest of the cast. His marvellously tarty wife is played by Kathryn Ritchie – a woman who looks like she’s just raided Ann Summers before her credibly wanton performance.
At one point, Cincinnatus accuses the people in his cell of being nothing more than “parodies” and this is something which the cast fight hard against, in order not to resort to flat two-dimensional characters.
The most enigmatic character is that of Pierre (George Sallis) who takes ownership of the stage through his immensely watchable performance.
Like the bizarre game of chess Cincinnatus is forced to play, all rules and logic are left outside the prison walls; and of course, when there are no rules, anything is possible. The play is typically Nabokovian, with director Sobchak clearly channelling elements of Beckett and Kafka into the blackly comic production.
Because of this, it does require a certain amount of intellectual involvement from the audience; however, like all the best Nabokovian works, this engagement is vindicated in the final thrilling denouement.
Until August 3
020 7485 9897

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