The House on the Lake - Griffin Theatre Co
A man with memory loss attempts to figure out his identity in this streamlined thriller.
Overview
At Griffin after premiering last year at Perth's Black Swan, Aidan Fennessy’s The House on the Lake is an admirably streamlined thriller devoid of the Important Issues that bedevil Australian theatre, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing. Still, it’s never less than involving, thanks chiefly to the wonderfully detailed performances from Huw Higginson as a man who wakes up in a psychiatric facility and Jeanette Cronin as his assessor. Higginson’s David has lost his short-term memory in some sort of accident, and Alice, a psychologist, is trying to help him recover it. Or is she?
Fennessy takes his time peeling away the fog of confusion. Where is David? How long has he been there? How did he lose his short-term memory? As many commentators have pointed out, these are all questions Christopher Nolan asked 15 years ago in Memento, and this play feels like a mash-up of that film with The Usual Suspects.
But for all its Russian doll-like construction, The House on the Lake isn’t nearly as ingenuous or as unpredictable as either of them. Its incremental revelations don’t add up to the final reveal, they just lead to it, and Cronin has a slab of exposition foisted upon her late in the game that’s all too pat.
Still, it’s hard to think of a better production being done of the play than this one, directed by Kim Hardwick. Both actors are superb in roles that require them to be reticent and open (or seemingly so) at the same time, and designer Stephen Curtis has arranged them on a bare white stage that’s both evocative and fluid. The transitions as Martin Kinnane’s lights dim are smoothly efficient; clever nods to the central character’s state of perpetually waking up.
And though the play they’ve chosen to mount isn’t quite one for the ages, it’s a tonic to see a show dedicated to nothing more than to entertain. In the end The House on the Lake is nothing more than that, but nothing less, either.
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