SAVED OR DESTROYED
Old Red Lion

ON the brink of death, what do you think about? That is the question native New Yorker Harry Kondoleon puts to us in Saved Or Destroyed, the playwright’s final work before his own death in 1994. The play bares all the hallmarks of a work written by a scribe facing his final hour, with the theme of death permeating the entire piece like an unwanted spirit.
Impossible to categorise, neither fitting comfortably as a satire or a farce, ‘Saved or Destroyed’ is set at a rehearsal for an interior play of the same name, which follows a dysfunctional family’s beach vacation, and manages to simultaneously deal with the themes of miscarriage, abortion, religion, incest and adoption without seeming like a Jerry Springer episode.
It has been said that the Kondoleon touch is that of ‘tender brutality’, which is painfully evident within his treatment of these delicate themes.
The play flits between rehearsals and ‘off the record’ scenes, where we get to know the real characters of the embittered out-of-work actors putting on the performance. Both worlds are full of atrocity, anxiety, anger, illness and effervescent friendships. Both as fragile as a butterfly wing, and as easily snapped.
Do not seek answers, for the play will not provide them. By the end, nothing appears to be resolved in either the real or imaginary sphere, and yet this does not seem to matter.
Under Andrea Kantor’s direction, Kondoleon’s conundrum is brought to life through, amongst others, the brilliant figures of stressed-out Ivan (the Terrible) masterfully played by Dan Waller, and séance- loving, son-worshipping Jersey girl Lucille (Ashley McGuire), who talks to her unborn child from beyond the grave.
Such melodramatic madness may seem too quirky for comfort, but within the intimate atmosphere of the Old Red Lion Theatre, it works surprisingly well, in this entertaining and engaging slice of shimmering existentialism.

020 7837 7816
Until July 30