The Exquisite New Adventures Of Mata Hari

at the Old Fire Station 'til Saturday 30th October

The year is 1966 and Section Ten, a top secret branch of the MI5, wages a bitter war with an organisation known as The Secret Vatican, allegedly a branch of the real Vatican. Both organisations race to discover and recreate an ancient and extinct 'language of Eden'. The bumbling Boswell (John Doy) is recruited as a double agent, only to be continually rescued by the enigmatic agent known by the code-name Mata Hari (Jessica Stretch), who aspires to an avenger-like dynamism in a man's world. The plot is, to say the least, complicated, working on the rather obscure central premise of a pure ancient language of Eden in which there is no gap between expression and the expressed; signifier and signified. The Babel Fragment is what everyone is fighting over, for it holds the crucial code. As this concept is not explained in full until Veal's enthusiastic tirade well into the second half, I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about.

The eponymous Mata Hari is a symbolic figure in this play of assumed identity, where nothing and nobody is what it appears. Just as Veal's fanatical vision denounces a civilisation in which language cannot live up to the object it refers to, so do the characters in this play always drift away from our conception of them. These code names shield a character and intentions that refuse to be pinned down. The play thus twists and turns as the characters metamorphose in the most unexpected ways.
James Bridgeman is a sufficiently obsessive Veal, while Richard Brent is an equally obsessed and delightfully camp Secret Pope. Trevor Slack and Dominic Tierney appear to relish the role of the sherbet-dip sucking assassins. John Doy is successfully hapless as Boswell, who would be unable to fake such bumbling tactlessness if he tried. Anne Lucas the secretary (Daisy Loyd) is his meek counterpart, who 'chooses to keep her real name' because she is, we realise, a genuinely nice person. Jessica Stretch as Mata Hari herself is disappointing, conveying a lack of dynamism, and a marked absence of flamboyance that conflicts with her role as a masterful and sexual figure, and a self-consciousness that fails to portray a fearless secret agent. The audio-visual effects of the production are excellent, using the musical and narratory techniques of television drama to link the scenes and add to the tension. Since technology is an integral part of the plot, the large all-seeing screen in Veal's ofice works well, although it is hard to believe that this kind of technology existed in the 60's. The professional nature of these effects almost manages to do the play a disservice, for they highlight how well the story would work in film or on tv.

Not exquisite, but certainly interesting, this production will leave you unravelling the story for days afterwards.

Jane Labous.