Marilyn Ann Bird gives a spectacular solo performance in Underneath the Lintel this week at Nottingham Arts Theatre...
By the time you read this review of a one-woman play about a librarian’s obsessive search for a mysterious figure she traces back across centuries through books borrowed from the library where she works, the show itself may have started to become one you hear people swapping memories of thanks to the way it wove too into their own lives.
Everything hinges on Marilyn Ann Bird’s spectacular performance. She brings to the role a tenacity for getting to the root of things Jack Reacher would applaud. The piece is an hour-and-change long, and the energy and flexibility required to find fresh and valid nuances for her deliciously off-book librarian is epic. Wit, awkwardness, hurt and loss are conveyed with accuracy and precision, and all of that and more ensure this rich script lives and breathes in the moment.
Wit, awkwardness, hurt and loss are conveyed with accuracy and precision
Part of the challenge in the production is how Glen Berger’s script begins in seeming whimsy before and taking its audience step by unlikely step into deeper territories. A seemingly light initial touch reflects the way people often skirt around stark facts about how the world gets to be what it is, before a fuller, bigger, bloodier picture is unmissable.
The Olympic-level stamina and skill this show calls for also requires Marilyn to generate most of its energy from a maze of text, with some opportunity to generate more through subtle audience engagement. Having seen her spark off an equivalently standout performer in Apple of Discord a few months back makes me wonder if with a second actor playing some of those she encounters on this quest through our civilisation’s shadow, a knockout show could have been even more impressive.
The how and what and why of the show’s unfolding is kaleidoscopic, mesmeric, and for sure has deep contemporary resonances in ways that make for an achingly tender production. Music and screen are used effectively and atmospherically, and director Chris Sims finds ways for the play’s pace and rhythm to be broken up by simple and ingenious approaches. That skilled theatricality offers text and performer greater room to play.
In potent and unobvious ways Berger’s writing uses the ambiguous tale of the Wandering Jew to explore how any of us can think about the unthinkable, speak about what’s unspeakable. 2026 out of 10.
Underneath the Lintel takes place at Nottingham Arts Theatre until Saturday 24 October.
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