The End of Eddy by Pamela Carter is based on the book
En finir avec Eddy Belleguele, a memoir by Edouard Louis about growing
up gay and poor in a small French village.
Normally I would describe the world of a play before I get
to the credits and give a sense of the kind of story you’re going to see. But
this production is as much about adapting the book into theatre as it is about
Eddy himself.
Two performers, Oseloka Obi and James Russell-Morley, play
Eddy and all the other characters – sometimes on stage and sometimes on one of
four video screens. There were four televisions in Eddy’s house when he grew
you, you see. It’s that kind of production, too.
The actors also take their time to explain the differences
between the book and the play: you can’t fit everything from a book into ninety
minutes on stage, and theatre has different responsibilities than books, too,
apparently. The show makes statements like this and never really explores them.
They fundamentally change one of the final scenes of the book to make it more
theatrical – and rob the story of some of its poignancy.
Pamela Carter and director Stuart Laing have teamed up with
Unicorn Theatre, one of the UK’s premiere theatre companies making work for
young audiences. And this work does feel aimed at teenagers, while also missing
the mark. This production is at times inventive and at times held back by its
Brechtian aesthetic. Yes, there is fun to be had with live performers
interacting with TV screens, but also that felt like a barrier to connecting
with Eddy and his situation. It was certainly a barrier to connecting with moments
played at the bus stop at the back of the stage.
I laughed out loud a few times and I was fascinated by a few
fleeting details about life in the French countryside versus the cosmopolitan
view of France I have through films and novels set in Paris. There’s a moment
late in the play where Eddy describes a moment of affection – a kiss on both
cheeks – that is a world away from his home town, but evocative of the kind of
thing I associate with the French. That’s the kind of detail that is rare in
this show, with a UK production translating the work into British slang and
making me wish I was getting a better insight into Eddy’s real life.
There are some universal truths in the play about toxic masculinity
and how brutal society can be to those in the country, those who are poor and
those who aren’t heterosexual. The End of Eddy tries to tell a story
that’s at the intersection of these things but doesn’t really illuminate any of
them.
I watched this show mostly as a theatre maker, trying to
understand the choices being made, because I couldn’t engage that much as a
viewer. I was stuck in my head, trying to understand why this adaptation works
the way it does, because I rarely felt anything. And I should have felt
something. Feeling like an outsider in high school is my story, too.
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