Catch it while you can: Prospectcontributor Alexander Fiske-Harrison can be found at the Jermyn Street Theatre until the end of this month starring in his new play The Pendulum. A historical drama set in 1900s Vienna, Fiske-Harrison takes the lead as one lieutenant Friedrich von Leiben, a soldier whose marriage to a young artist of Jewish ancestry is threatened by a climate of increasing suspicion and prejudice, as well as by his own jealousy.
The play has received good notices thus far, although there have also been some slightly consternated notes struck about how "relevant" its tale is to the present day. The Guardian, for example, muses that "if there are contemporary parallels, they are not obvious." It's a question the author may well be glad people are struggling to answer. As he put it to me:
I wanted to write something better than the drear recycled themes parading themselves as relevance so that I could act in something with some genuine drama. "Blood and sperm on the stage, darling," as someone once said to me.
What with press deadlines, I haven't made it to Jermyn Street yet myself, but I'm looking forward to a slice of modern drama that won't include soliloquies which could have been taken from the leader pages of the Independent. Although I hope the author has been restrained enough to interpret his interlocutor's advice figuratively…
