Und

We open in a precisely constructed room where one slender, aristocratic woman—Und—is mechanically striding around, turning on a sixpence whilst gazing dead-eyed into the middle distance. From the ceiling hang several sheet metal trays. Elsewhere, there is a pair of chairs, a huge mirror and two torch-brandishing stagehands unobtrusively providing a series of ringing sound effects: clinks, clanks, prangs and prongs; the uncomfortable clout of metal-on-metal.

In fact, “uncomfortable” is an accurate touchstone for the entire evening. Und, you see, is waiting for someone. Who that person is, and indeed, where he or Und is, isn’t clear. He “gathers Jews” she emphatically announces, of which she is one.

Alone, and seemingly under attack, she is very much a woman on the edge. Her attempts to assert her identity—and a proud adherence to her perceived high social status—are thwarted by the dire, solitary situation in which she finds herself. This conflict—and Und’s need to wrestle some form of control over her desperate micro-world—inject the play with much tension.

British playwright Howard Barker isn’t one to give easy answers and Und—with its unsettling thematic and literal shifts in tone and light—most certainly isn’t an easy play, to watch or perform. Credit then, to Annette Chown, for a hugely engaging solo performance that is by turns taut with suppression, wild with despair and puffed up with vanity.

Overall, this heavily symbolic, perplexing and occasionally confusing play is loaded with ideas and questions, from which you suspect many different conclusions with be drawn. But you certainly can’t hide from it.

Noisy, confrontational, disturbing, beautiful. Barker will be pleased.