ANATOMY OF A MAD MAN

Bristol Old Vic

As more and more theatres give up the expense and risk of producing plays in favour of joining the circuit of 'Straight from the West End' and 'Now in its 5^th amazing year' tours, residents of Bristol are blessed to have the Old Vic: a theatre which still believes in new writing and fresh drama. Anatomy of a Mad Man is the latest example of the theatre's commitment both to new plays and to black theatre.

The play is a one-man, two hour account of the life of Michael Blake - a promising black architecture student who slithers over the edge into schizophrenia through a combination of undergraduate stress, racism and police brutality. The monologue is delivered to a picture of Andreas Vesalius, the 16^th century father of modern anatomy, as Michael puzzles with the question of whether - emotionally and anatomically - we really are the same under the skin.

Writer/performer Patrick Miller has written himself a part which is substantially grittier than the comic Idle Jacks and Buttonses which he has played so successfully in eight of the Old Vic's much-acclaimed pantomimes. There is clearly far more to Miller than a wide smile and a pair of brightly-coloured pantaloons. He manages to grip the audience with a simple, well-paced discourse. His performance is counterpointed by sound designer Brian Moseley's integral representation of the voices in Michael's head as racist taunts blending in a Tricky-esque drum and bass throb.

The main weak link in the piece is the script. Miller (in his role as author) flirts briefly and fumblingly with imagery and metaphors which are never brought fully to fruition. There is also a tendency to forsake the dramatic for the didactic, with the programme notes on Vesalius and the history of Hari-kiri being regurgitated into the midst of the narrative flow. Yet education does not mean elucidation. The link with Vesalius is never truly fleshed out, leaving one with the sense that it is little than more than a handy device to give the play a catchy title. And more crucially, the anatomy of Michael's descent into schizophrenia is strangely obfuscated. It is unclear whether his schizophrenia arises full-blown from the final straw of a police beating, or whether it is the gradual result of a self-fulfilling prophecy by a colour-biased institutional system which is quick to label angry black men as 'schizoid'.

Despite its flaws, however, Anatomy of a Mad Man is still a worthwhile project, both in the subject matter which it seeks to present and in the graphic emotional brutality which compensates for the lack of literary polish. It may not be great drama, but it is certainly engrossing theatre.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE

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