La Musica

If the Almeida’s current ‘Medea’ channels all the agony and ugliness of a disintegrating marriage, then ‘La Musica’ is its cooler, calmer counterpoint, in which an ex huband and wife meet up in a bar three years after their divorce to have a final, opaque reckoning.

Marguerite Dumas’s 1985 play – in a translation by Barbara Bray – stars Emily Barclay and Sam Troughton as Anne-Marie and Michel, who meet in a former haunt to pick over their marriage. For its first half, Jeff James’s striking production essentially occurs on two huge screens, which display Barclay and Troughton’s faces blown up to huge size as they deliver their lines sat down, swapping chit-chat that feels incredibly charged, all stolen glances, sensual smiles and sizing each other up: a chic dance of eyes and lips.

It’s an intriguingly ambiguous story about two former lovers apparently trying to fill in the blanks in their relationship, the details being too painful to discuss before – one last shot at honesty before they split forever. But are they actually being honest now? And is there just one ‘now’? The more conventionally-staged second half appears to be a sort of alternate version of the first, rather than a follow-on.

Fascinating, but underneath the riveting presentation, much of what the pair say is unavoidably cliché-bound melodrama: him waffling on about how he bought a gun to shoot her; her discussing her encounters with sundry other men. There’s a confusing total absence of hurt or bitterness: was their marriage and this encounter all just a game? And if so, to what end? A stylish piece of theatre, but frustratingly devoid of insight.