| Description |
… Talk is his shield, his weapon, his home, his monument. When he shuffles on to and across the stage in pyjamas at the opening of the play, bespectacled, bent, with aching back, looking for his pills, for a quick furtive brandy, and shuffles off agains without a word said, he seems ony half alive, the husk of a man. But once he starts talking, we know that life still possesses him: if the life seems all talk, the copiousness of the talk makes him real. The play is, in brief, a study in one act of an old man, and old man who talks and talks, but talks to maintain life, not to communicate, or to communicate in a way that seems a failure of communication, and only so far as to keep his wife's interest and attentiveness, while her attempts to get through to him are constantly frustrated. |
Event
Provide feedback on The Rattle