Catch it while you can: Prospect contributor Alexander Fiske-Harrison can be found at the Jermyn Street Theatre until the end of this month starring in his new play The Pendulum. A historical drama set in 1900s Vienna, Fiske-Harrison takes the lead as one lieutenant Friedrich von Leiben, a soldier whose marriage to a young artist of Jewish ancestry is threatened by a climate of increasing suspicion and prejudice, as well as by his own jealousy.
The play has received good notices thus far, although there have also been some slightly consternated notes struck about how “relevant” its tale is to the present day. The Guardian, for example, muses that “if there are contemporary parallels, they are not obvious.” It’s a question the author may well be glad people are struggling to answer. As he put it to me:
I wanted to write something better than the drear recycled themes parading themselves as relevance so that I could act in something with some genuine drama. “Blood and sperm on the stage, darling,” as someone once said to me.
What with press deadlines, I haven’t made it to Jermyn Street yet myself, but I’m looking forward to a slice of modern drama that won’t include soliloquies which could have been taken from the leader pages of the Independent. Although I hope the author has been restrained enough to interpret his interlocutor’s advice figuratively…
Some other reviews:
from The Stage by John Thaxter
“In Vienna in 1900, an Arthur Schnitzler drama is drawing the cultural elite, many of them from Jewish families happily assimilated into Austrian society. But Schnitzler himself, having mocked the army’s obsession with its formal codes of honour, is about to be stripped of his commission by the German military aristocracy - a hint of simmering anti-semitism.
Against this background Alexander Fiske-Harrison has written this new and touching four-hander about a fateful marriage between a rising army officer and his beautiful bride, she a successful portrait painter with links to Parisian artistic circles, but who carries a trace of Jewish blood from her grandmother.
Fiske-Harrison himself plays the officer with something of the style of a handsome British film idol of the fifties, more concerned with burnishing his career than spending time with his wife. She has the profile of a Shavian ‘new woman’ - amused, talented and independent, given a delightfully detailed performance by Sian Clifford.”
from the Sunday Times by Louis White
“Fiske-Harrison, who writes, produces and stars, had the right idea in looking at this era. The result is something earnest, nicely acted - if a little contained.”
from Time Out by Andrew Haydon
“Acute on matters of jealousy and grand passions.”
from the West End Extra by Tom Boulter
“Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s detailed new play is a dramatic and highly entertaining portait of Viennese high society life…
The acting is clear throughout and relaxed. Fiske-Harrison, a former philosophy student at Oxford, has penned an engaging and well-researched new play; a touching and beautiful story that lends itself perfectly to the stage…
The Pendulum is that rare bird: a new play worthy of the attention it demands. ”
from The London Theatre Blog by Jens Peters
“Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s new play at the Jermyn Street Theatre is well-made in every sense of the term. He presents a solidly written story of love and jealousy, twisted with social and racial bigotry and set in turn-of-the-century Austria.
Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s von Leiben, a military man through and through and at ease with his own body and physical beauty, is effectively contrasted with Gareth Kennerley’s awkward intellectual Neurath.”