8 August 2006 Written by Andrew Eglinton Print This Post  Email This Post

At The Table by Marcos Barbosa
Translated by Mark O’Thomas
Country of origin: Brazil
UK Premiere at the Royal Court Upstairs 5 Feb 2004
Nick Hern Books 2004
ISBN: 1 85459 790 6

Using a similar structure as in his other play, Almost Nothing, Barbosa bases At the Table around an event that is concealed to the reader/audience but that all the characters know about and are affected by - call them omniscient characters. Barbosa’s theatre is one of reactions and consequences, a type of ‘post-traumatic’ theatre where flashbacks become key narrative devices, allowing the audience occasional glimpses of the event that has been such a shock to all the characters.

The opening two scenes of the play focus on two teenage brothers, Ignacio and Bruno and their relationships with their summer camp leader (Castro) and their father. Ignacio is extremely shy but is nonetheless entrusted with the responsibility of becoming camp leader by Castro. Castro plays the role of a father-figure to the boy and wants him to gain the confidence that he seems to lack. The boys’ real father on the hand comes across as compassionate and understanding, he has to take care of his sick wife as well as bring up the two boys. Bruno is the elder brother, very much assertive and dominant in his ways and holds little esteem for Ignacio.

Our first encounter with this sense of trauma in the play comes in scene 3. It is a scene set twenty years after the opening two scenes and it is a conversation between two men, two old friends who were somehow implicated in the event, but how, where, when and why remains unclear. There is mention of an ‘old queer’ who has been released from prison, then further allusions are made to abuse, and suggestions of rape that the two men went through. But again, we are not told who the perpetrators were, whether it was the father, the camp leader or the boys.

The final scene of the play goes back to where scene two left off and shows the conversation between the father and the two boys. The father suspects something has happened to them while they were away at camp but that they are keeping it secret. He grills Ignacio for evidence but to no immediate avail. Only at the very end when Bruno is threatening his brother to keep quiet, does Ignacio come out and call his father. The finishing line is Ignacio saying ‘Something did happen at the camp’.

The rhythm of this play, as in Almost Nothing is measured and winding, we meander through scenes and characters, catching fragments of a story along the way. As readers/audience we are left to use our imagination, to fill in the gaps. Whereas gaps and incongruence in new plays are often pointed out as structural weaknesses, with Barbosa it is quite the opposite, the unspoken or the ’subtext’ is his forte. I strongly recommend his work for an egoless, humbling experience.