A man with a bald spot sits alone at a cafe table writing the old-fashioned way, with a pen. In a teacup sits something that may be a peach.
Women come and go, occasionally discussing the work of a famous Italian painter.
Kate (Kate Lindsay), is an unhappily single artist. Esme (Tarn Felton), has a piercing wail and a dissolving marriage. Juiola (Miriam Noonan), an exuberant drama student half their age, prefers declamation to ordinary speech and is particularly fond of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Tennessee Williams.
Cake is consumed, and sometimes gin. Occasionally, the women encroach on the space of the cafe scribbler, who may be T.S. Eliot or his creation Prufrock (Ben Blakely), but there is little interaction between them.
Written and directed by Elsa May, this short play probably won't expand your understanding of The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, disturb your universe to any great extent, or even lead you to confront overwhelming questions, but it offers an intriguing and often entertaining commentary.
The women who drift languidly in and out of T.S. Eliot's famous poem take centre stage, develop their own personalities and irritate, fascinate and ultimately inspire the Eliot/Prufrock, who at the end of the play delivers an animated recitation of the entire poem and, in so, doing draws together some of the very odd threads we've been observing.
I can't say I liked everything about the production. The first few minutes consist of Eliot/Prufrock sitting writing to the accompaniment of Eleanor Rigby and other music for several minutes, to the point where last night's night's audience, for want of anything else to occupy their attention, began to chatter quite noisily among themselves.
The acting is patchy. Elsa May, however, is to be congratulated for the successful completion of an original project which began life as a student exercise.
