You For Me For You for better or for worse
Daniel Nelson
Image by Royal Court
For You For Me For You
That information needs no Spoiler Alert! because Mia Chung’s play is so inventive - and so inventively staged – that knowing a few facts in advance cannot possibly spoil the enjoyment.
It plays surreally with time and imagination, which isn’t surprising given that Chung has been working on it or years, halted further performances after its premiere in the US, re-worked it before this production at London’s Royal Court Theatre – and says “It’s a wildly different play from the one we began rehearsing”. (“I hate to tell you this,” she told director Richard Twyman in a post-performance discussion, “but I might have more revisions to make.”)
It’s essentially a simple story about staying in the North or fleeing to the West and the differences between life in a hermetically sealed dictatorship and in a self-obsessed, choice-burdened capitalist society. Why use surrealism? Because, says Chung, “imagination is the most faithful way of getting at what’s going on in North Korea.”
But that simple idea is conveyed in two lifetimes, settings that include the bottom of a well and a baseball game, and some very odd goings-on. The writing is crisp, the acting excellent (though Daisy Haggard steals the show with her wondrously gobbledegook but comprehensible streams of American English), and the constantly morphing set that’s surely up for an award.
Carried along by the sheer fun of the whole presentation I have only one caveat - the content. The depictions of both North Korea and the US have little new to say, with the pleasure coming from the originality of the way it is said rather than from fresh insights.
• You For Me For You is at the Royal Court, £20/£10, Sloane Square, SW1 until 9 January. Info: 7565 5000/ http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/
+ Also on North Korea: 5-30 January , P'Yonyang, a love story of North Korean childhood sweethearts spanning three decades, Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, SW10. Info: 0844 847 1652/ www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk until 30 January
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