Still
3 February 2017
3 Stars
The legend of Vivian Maier has really grown since her death in 2009. Among her processions was a tea chest of her astonishing street photographs, all unseen, never exhibited, all taken over the years on her trusted Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera. She only exhibited her photographs once, and the New York critics savaged them. She moved to Chicago, became a nanny, and continued taking photographs. Her photographs now command a fortune, and the people who discovered them became rich.
The play imagines a meeting between Maier and a fictional drug addict/hacker known only as H, and the debate revolves around copyright and identity. H steals people’s identify electronically, and, when high, she encounters Maier’s work in an exhibition in Chicago, and Vivienne is brought to life as they discuss her work and data, ownership and property. The play is fully immersive, the audience stand for the hour running time, and you can download the Still app to take photographs of the show.
The clash of past and current cultures makes for an uneasy alliance. Although Beth Fitzgerald as Maier is very good, little is actually known of her life, so actual incident is tricky to recreate. But she is far and away the most interesting character, and I wanted to know more-even if not all of it true, I wanted the play to explore her reasons for hiding her art in more depth. As H, Molly Taylor is convincing as a pretty dislikeable character, I felt little empathy for her, despite the play’s themes of loneliness and disconnection being quite relevant. The writer, Paul Hodson, seems unwilling to commit fully to either character, both a little two dimensional and sketchy.
The major problem the production has is the work itself. Each photograph of Maier’s that is projected onto the screens tells a thousand stories, and here is where the play resides. Nothing on stage matches the snapshots of real life that were captured, and the play contains none of the emotional context that the photographs do.
Until 4 February 2017
Photographs: Ludo des Cognets
BOOK TICKETS FOR STILL AT THE MERCURY THEATRE
Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
Stay in the spotlight
Get the latest theatre news, reviews and exclusive offers straight to your inbox.
