★★★★★
Alexander and Helen Millington speak highly of each other outside the Camden People’s Theatre. This is just minutes after an hour-long production of mind-games and marital breakdown. Alexander is seemingly on a mission to write the most insufferable role for himself in A Caravan Named Desire. This echoes his previous work, such as I Heart Michael Ball. Helen not only directed the production but added a woman’s perspective to the script. A Caravan Named Desire is about sex, intimacy, and three different forms of trust. This play is the couple’s first time acting together and their joint effort to throw us into a disorienting marriage certainly pays off.
If you, dear reader, prefer plays that smoothly take you through one transparent plotline, this may not be for you. A Caravan Named Desire leaves us in a state of perpetual perplexity. Helen indignantly jolts in and out of playing herself and Krystal, a sex worker that Alex visited (under the pseudonym Gary) for three months as research for the play. Alex domineers the play, tugging Helen along despite her resistance to take part in it at all. Disappointed glares, towering over chairs, and an unwavering insistence on dancing are all manipulative techniques to coerce his wife into portraying his experience with Krystal.
In a Brechtian sense, Alex consistently held us at arm’s length. We are never allowed to become too emotional involved with Alex and Helen. “It makes you ask: what am I supposed to be paying attention to?”, says Alex after the show. We pay attention to the humiliating artifice of the play itself. The lies that Alex has told his wife about Krystal, the lies that he told Krystal, and the lies that he tells the audience, are inescapable. Helen and Alex constantly call out to Emma, the lighting and sound director, breaking any immersion into the scenario.
When suspending our immersion in a play, it better be worth doing. Alex and Helen break the illusion to expose the machinations of power that Alex employs over all the other characters. He is not transparent with Krystal, swapping the premise of why he is seeing her with every visit. He lies to his wife, Helen, about the extent of his interactions with Krystal. He abuses our trust as an audience to cast himself in a sympathetic light. However, as he tries to assuage our most contemptuous moments with him, he asks volunteers to smear makeup on his body to look like injuries.
A Caravan Named Desire certainly got some laughs from the idiosyncratic beats and ticks of a married couple. However, the humour is not the main attraction. Rather, this is a fascinating exposé of power. The power dynamics between men and women, sex workers and their clientele, husband and wife, a writer and their audience, are at the heart of this play. How much trust can we expect to foster in these respective relationships? Ergo, what happens when that trust is broken? If you think you have the psychological strength for a manipulative whirlwind, A Caravan Named Desire is a rigorous study of power.
Words by Elizabeth Sorrell
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