An electric-guitar wielding narrator, dressed in black leather, declares: “The word normal was invented in the 19th century… not how things are, but how they should be.” Joseph Merrick’s father drunkenly informs his son that he does not fit this “age of sameness”.
Merrick (1862-1890) endured a rare, debilitating physical condition that severely restricted the movement of both his legs and one arm. It also affected the shape of his head, limiting his facial expressions and ability to speak. Unable to work, and not prepared to accept a life in the workhouse, Merrick became a sideshow attraction, billed as the Elephant Man. During his final four years, he was provided with refuge at the London hospital.
Merrick’s life has been dramatised in a Tony-award-winning play by Bernard Pomerance (at one point, David Bowie played Merrick) and in the 1980 film by David Lynch (with John Hurt in the title role). In this, his 2017 “theatre poem”, the Australian playwright Tom Wright uses Merrick’s life as a vehicle for ideas “about the city and the body”.
Simon Kenny’s set suggests an industrial landscape: metal beams and struts rise and fall above the stage. There is poetry in Merrick’s mother’s account of being scared by an elephant while he was in her womb (compellingly delivered by Daneka Etchells) and in some of Merrick’s reflections on his life (movingly developed by Zak Ford-Williams). The stuff of theatre, though, is lacking: drama. Mostly, the action, under Stephen Bailey’s direction, follows a simple, narrative path.
The set changes. We are in a large, institutional space: the London hospital. Here, Merrick is befriended by a nurse, visited by an actor and excluded from festivities. He is also examined by a phalanx of doctors who verbally detail the state of his limbs, torso and head. This feels unnecessary. It highlights the overall impression that Merrick, the person, has been lost; his life become a pretext for the expounding of other people’s visions.
