Talking Heads – Bridge Theatre, London

A review of two pairings of Talking Heads at the Bridge Theatre. This is the closest I have had to genuine live theatre since March, very exciting! It does seem that all the people of Yorkshire have been living very contained little lives though, and dressing like the royal family.

Talking Heads at the Bridge: an Alan Bennett institution that was news to me

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series is something I’ve had to read up on since my trip to the Bridge Theatre. A series of dramatic monologues written originally for the BBC, it first aired in 1988. A second series in 1998 and various other interpretations including for radio have appeared over the years. In 2020, the Bridge Theatre worked with the BBC to produce a new broadcast series of ten of the monologues with new actors. Two brand new pieces were also added to the series. As lockdown began to ease, eight of these monologues became part of the Bridge’s reopening season; staged in four sets of two. I went to see two different sets of Talking Heads, so four of the monologues in total; Nights in the Garden of Spain (with Tamsin Greig), Miss Fozzard Finds her Feet (Maxine Peake), Playing Sandwiches (Lucian Msamati) and Lady of Letters (Imelda Staunton).

Genuine Live Theatre (in Monologue Form)

What was wonderful about seeing Talking Heads is that it’s the closest I’ve been to genuine, live theatre since March. (Coincidentally the last thing I saw a week before lockdown was also at the Bridge: A Number by Caryl Churchill). I’ve been fortunate to have seen as much as I have, but Blindness and C-o-n-t-a-c-t were more sound installations; Beat the Devil was pretty much David Hare on a Covid rant with Ralph Fiennes as mouthpiece; and An Evening with an Immigrant was poetry and story-telling. But Talking Heads is finally a little bit of theatre like it used to be pre-2020. Interesting stories, good acting, a bit of escapism into a different world for the evening.

From what I have read all of the Talking Heads monologues have similar themes running through them; of isolation and guilt and death or illness. This was certainly the case with the ones I saw. The pairing of the monologues helped to bring out comparisons between them even with very different characters and stories. It seemed that with each of the pairings, the one that was a little bleaker went first. I appreciated this because it meant the evening was concluded on a humorous note rather than a depressing one. I like a bit of realism in my theatre, but have had quite enough realism already in 2020!

Nights in the Garden of Spain

Nights in the Garden of Spain was the first of the four monologues I saw. Tamsin Greig plays a woman who is lonely and unhappy in her marriage. She becomes involved in a murder case in the neighbourhood when she is the first person on the scene. In developing a friendship with the woman who killed her husband, she begins to find a bit of freedom as she learns some unpleasant truths about the man she herself is married to. The monologue ends on a sad note, and Greig is really wonderful in her portrayal of the character. There is such pathos and longing in it that it a very powerful thing to watch.

Miss Fozzard Finds her Feet

With this is paired Miss Fozzard Finds her Feet, which is a different thing altogether. Maxine Peake plays the eponymous Miss Fozzard, a fairly unlikeable character who is caring (unwillingly) for her brother while working in a department store. Her pleasure in life are her visits to a chiropodist (it transpires she doesn’t get quite as much pleasure out of the visits as the chiropodist himself does). Miss Fozzard is mean and unforgiving, perhaps bitter about the wasted potential in her life. Peake is so good at getting the humour from the story and playing off the audience, however, that overall the evening is not as uneven as it might have been.

It was this character that had my friend and I, both unfamiliar with Talking Heads, trying to figure out whether the writing was new or old. Does Bennett really think people still have jobs for life in a department store, we asked ourselves, or is it just a timeless version of Yorkshire? The department store boredom and petty gossip is perfect to draw out the action of this piece, in any case.

Playing Sandwiches

On the second evening, the first monologue up was Playing Sandwiches, with Lucian Msamati. This is a piece of theatre where the horror unfolds slowly as the audience pieces together the odd clue dropped by Wilfred Paterson, park maintenance man with a dark past and a darker present. Before the monologue ends, the penny has dropped in no uncertain terms. It must be hard to play a character whose transgression is generally felt by society to be unforgiveable. Nonetheless Msamati plays Paterson with real humanity, building up a rapport with the audience before revealing the stark divide between us. And bonus for 2020, nobody could see my jaw drop with a mask on!

Lady of Letters

Finally, there was Imelda Staunton playing Irene Ruddock in Lady of Letters. Irene is another small and unfulfilled Bennett character. She is lonely after the death of her mother and firing off letters about each and every infringement of the social order which she spots: hearse drivers smoking near the crematorium; messy streets around Buckingham Palace; injudicious use of police resources. In the end, after a particularly unfortunate bit of unwarranted finger pointing, she is put on a suspended sentence. Even then she can’t help herself: out comes the letter writing equipment again and next thing we know she is in jail… And loving the newfound freedom it brings her!

Staunton is obviously having a lot of fun with the role, and enjoys playing off the audience. While both characters in this pairing end up behind bars, therefore, the mood couldn’t be more different. It’s still an interesting juxtaposition though. I guess that is the thing with Talking Heads: there are so many of them now and so many different threads running through them that you can make them do almost anything you want through your choice of monologues, actors, directors and staging.

Final Thoughts

The two evenings I spent at the Bridge watching Talking Heads were therefore a lot of fun, despite or perhaps in part due to their seriousness and pathos in parts. It was nice to be able to immerse myself in the characters and their lives and stories. All of the monologues were staged very simply. I’m sure in part this is due to the need to switch between them while maintaining Covid precautions. I don’t think this stripped back approach interfered with my enjoyment of the monologues themselves: all of the actors were putting in strong performances which overcame the additional suspension of disbelief required. Top notch.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

Nights in the Garden of Spain and Miss Fozzard Finds her Feet until 24 October
Playing Sandwiches and Lady of Letters until 31 October