London.

TITLE AND DEED
by Will Eno.

Print Room at the Coronet 103 Notting Hill Gate W11 3LB To 7 February 2015.
Mon – Fri 7.30 pm. Mat Sat 4pm.
Runs 1hr 10min No interval.

TICKETS: 020 3642 6606.
www.the-print-room.org
Review: William Russell 17 January.

Birth, life, death and the whole damned thing; all with style.
The one-man play is always tricky to do but Conor Lovett carries it off brilliantly in the tiny theatre The Print Room has created inside its new home, the old Coronet Cinema – on the stage, a temporary haven while the rest of the building is being restored. Eno has written a daring, hilarious and disturbing tale delivered by a nameless traveller from an unknown land about what seems like anything that comes in to the traveller’s head when confronted by his audience.

Random thoughts perhaps, but as the man proceeds they all build-up to a meditation on being born, on living, on losing one’s parents, losing one’s friends, on death and the ways of the world, which both challenges and upsets his listeners. Lovett, a small, bald man with an ingratiating smile, dressed in black with a blue jacket, enters, puts down the bag he is carrying and examines the onlookers. “I am not from here," he confides, before urging his listeners not to hate him and, please, not to walk out. Or if anyone does, to do so quietly.

Then he embarks on a series of random reflections about his family, about people he has stayed with, a family called Miller, who took him in then threw him out, about questioning his existence, growing old and how the world for the old becomes ultimately very small, just a room, a walk to the door and not much more.

As to where his own home is – it is “where the hat is hanging and the placenta buried.” Lovett is mesmerising and Eno has come up with a superb monologue.

The Man: Conor Lovett.

Director: Judy Hegarty Lovett.

2015-01-18 21:18:33