Everything Theatre Reviews, interviews and news for theatre lovers, London and beyond
This overly-ambitious drama will make you never want to get in a lift againSummary
Rating
Poor
The Lift begins somewhat promisingly. A once-upon-a-time-esque voiceover lays out what we’re seeing on stage: a lift operator at a table, a man in a box (the titular lift), a group waiting to be let into the lift and a man playing with a piece of string (Piero Grandinetti). This man, if you’ve seen Grandinetti’s previous play Do You Remember That This Is The Play I Was Telling You About, will be familiar to you, the voice says. Soon after this intriguing setup, things quickly go downhill.
The man, seemingly unaware of who or where he is, asks the assembled group their names. Each responds with a description of their character rather than a name; such as The Lady (Penny Klein), The Boxer (James Beschizza), The Dancer (Lynn Grandinetti). Although this could be interesting, it goes on for so long that any interest quickly peters out. After what feels like endless mumbling and stuttering, they enter the lift – the man reluctantly. Then it breaks down.
At this point, there’s still hope. In its promotional material its described as a story of what these characters will do to escape the lift, and how their relationships change and evolve over time. Yet a lack of characterisation across the board or meaningful interactions means that none of this comes to fruition. As for what they do to escape, it soon emerges, inexplicably, that if a person tells a story while the others are asleep, they can ‘leave’.
Story anthologies have always been popular, especially those that focus on the weird or the eerie. The Twilight Zone, Inside No. 9 and The Magnus Archives, just to name a few, have all seen huge success. The Lift draws inspiration from this lineage but misses a crucial element: good stories.
The first tale comes from The Engineer (Jonathan Kernan), who is actually not a lift engineer but an exceedingly camp, potentially failed, actor. His story is of childhood embarrassment and bullying. The second story, rather than a personal account, is a parable from The Lady on how people only welcome the truth when it’s attractively dressed. The final account is a biographical piece from The Boxer. He didn’t know what he wanted to be as a child, he started boxing. He got good at it. The end.
Despite the lack of any conceivable similarity between the meanings, tones or genres of these stories, all three allow the individuals to leave and go… somewhere. It’s tempting, at this point, to assume that the lift is some kind of purgatory, and that the telling of stories allows the characters to move on, into another plane. But why would these tales suffice? We never get any answers.
Beyond structural inconsistencies, if the fillers, long pauses and repetitions were cut from the script, it would be far shorter – not that that would make it more sensical. There seems to be attempts at Beckettian dialogue and existentialism, sudden bursts into song and dance that hint at absurdism, but there’s not enough grounding the story, narratively or philosophically, to give it any weight. As it stands, we’re left with a nonsensical mess.
Once the novelty of the lift wears off, the play transitions into a nightmarish sequence followed by a hospital scene, a detective duo wandering around with flashlights (featuring a baby doll and a stuffed animal of indeterminate species called Malcolm) and the return of the voiceover, who assures us that this is just the start of the journey. Thankfully, though, it’s the end of the play.
Perhaps if viewers have seen Do You Remember… then they’ll be able to discern what’s going on. As a standalone piece, however, it’s a difficult watch.
Written by: Piero Grandinetti
Sound & lighting technician: Venus Raven
Sound design by: Piero Grandinetti
The Lift has completed its current run.
