Six characters

What's real? What's reality?

That's the problem at the heart of Pirandello's play "Six Characters in search of an Author", which husband and I saw today at the Gielgud Theatre. It's a fascinating update on Pirendello's early twentieth century production. Apparently, he never finished fiddling with this play - no wonder I couldn't remember the ending - but he considered turning it into a film or a novel.

The six characters have developed a life of their own, in the way that a writer finds he doesn't (or she) always know what is going to come out of the pen - the story develops by itself sometimes. These six characters have a story that they insist on telling. But this is a play within a play, for the six characters interrupt a rehearsal - in the Gielgud, a film rehearsal for a documentary on assisted suicide.

Each of the six characters wants to give his or her version of the reality that happened to them, in their life. Each has a different take on their lives together. Each constructs the same story according his/her own perception and personality.

• The Father - guilt ridden
• The Step-daughter - haughty, sexy
• The Mother - distraught, weak and weepy
• The Son - arrogant, distant
• The silent Girl and Boy - why are they silent?

Then the actors attempt to reconstruct their story, putting a different angle to it. And here is yet another production of this play, with a different take from the one that Pirandello first produced:

• Madame Pace becomes a pimp,
  
• it's a documentary being filmed rather than a rehearsal of a Pirandello play,
• there's a scene where Pirandello discusses problems of this play, in Italian
• The Mother sings as if in an Opera
  

Why am I so interested?

Because we studied the play in depth when I was at college. I played the Mother. And because the problem of reality still haunts me; it comes up in the way I approach and write up my research.