Many aficionados still speak, in hushed tones, of the original 1999 production of Mnemonic, from Simon McBurney and his ever-intriguing Complicité company, as being one of the most influential pieces of theatre they have ever seen. Twenty-five years on and the piece returns, to the National’s grandest space, the Olivier; audience members are greeted by the startling simplicity of a stage that is bare apart from a single chair with a small stone placed in front of it.
Theatre has, of course, shape-shifted considerably over the past quarter century and what previously appeared so ground-breaking has lost a little of its novelty and lustre since. The first section, easily the strongest, is beguiling: Khalid Abdalla (known to many as Dodi Fayed in the final two series of The Crown) commands the 1,000-seat auditorium by musing playfully on the nature of memory and origins. “How does memory actually work?” he ponders, before giving us a light-hearted filleting of the latest scientific thinking, which insists upon memory as an imaginative act.
We’re asked to put on eye masks and, in the comfort of all-enveloping darkness, picture our families gradually backing up behind us. That was a powerful moment for me, on the eve of my birthday and with all direct family members now deceased.
These musings gradually begin to be overlaid by a series of scenes, too much of which feel only tangentially connected to the opening premise. Abdalla morphs into Omar, bewildered by the disappearance of his girlfriend Alice (Eileen Walsh) on the morning of her mother’s funeral. Yet the central focus is upon the discovery of the Iceman, a mummified body from 5,000 years ago found buried high up in the Alps. McBurney’s essential thrust is that we are all interconnected but, goodness, the scenes involving various experts discussing details about the Iceman do drag. I became increasingly restless and longed to return to the too-sketchy story of Alice and her fugitive father.
A fluid ensemble whisks us efficiently around myriad countries in Europe; again, the threads of interconnection are woven skilfully by director McBurney as the jovial Kostas Philippoglou pops up all over the place as an itinerant Greek taxi driver. Alice’s adventures end not in Wonderland but in Ukraine, with a conclusion that is disappointingly peremptory. Abdalla, who is required to spend a considerable portion of the show naked, continues to excel.
The applause that greeted the end of Mnemonic on opening night was reverential rather than ecstatic, a fitting response to a piece of theatre whose legendary status outshines the actual experience of watching it.
To 10 August (020 3989 5455, nationaltheatre.org.uk)