Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Duncan MacMillan’s LUNGS stealthily mulls over humanity’s environmental endgame vis-à-vis a mundane romance

• By drediman
• January 29, 2021
• No Comments

Somehow, Lungs by Duncan MacMillan (1984; People, Places and Things; The Effect) managed to elude my theatergoing over the last decade. When the play premiered in 2011, it unfortunately flew under my radar. When it was announced that the Old Vic’s acclaimed 2019 production would play the Brooklyn Academy of Music last March, I thought my chance to see the play had come – but we all know what happened to that engagement. Luckily, the Old Vic was able to adapt its revival for virtual consumption last summer for its excellent In Camera series; but alas, I missed that all-too-brief run, as well. Yesterday, I was finally able to catch Lungs, thanks to the Old Vic’s “playback” of its In Camera offerings to date (the series also includes Stephen Beresford’s Three Kings, Jack Thorne’s A Christmas Carol, and Brian Friel’s Faith Healer – all superb).

When Lungs first opened a decade ago, the two-hander was ahead of its time in its direct engagement with the grim realities of climate change (since then, the issue has become a hot topic, coming into sharper focus in our collective social conscience). But instead of a heavy-handed diatribe and overt call to action, Mr. MacMillan – in my opinion, one of the more exciting playwrights of his generation – opts for a stealthier approach. By juxtaposing a struggling and, by all accounts, mundane romantic relationship with the amorphous issue of climate change, the playwright elegantly highlights a dilemma most of us face – that is, how to reconcile our relatively inconsequential personal squabbles with the greater good of society. In its compact form and sneaky way with larger concerns, Lungs foreshadows a pair of subsequently penned two-handers (Nick Payne’s 2012 Constellations, Simon Stephens’ 2015 Heisenberg). I also noticed a touch of the great Caryl Churchill (Far Away) in the way Mr. MacMillan eventually evolves his play into a more pointed cautionary tale.

Matthew Warchus, who helmed the 2019 revival, has adapted his staging for pandemic-era live-steaming (accommodating social distancing protocols). Thanks to some dynamic camera work, I hardly minded that the two actors were never in the same frame. Dramaturgically, the fragmented presentation makes sense, given that the characters spend much of their relationship unable to, figuratively speaking, stay on the same page. Although I had a hard time caring about these manic creations, Claire Foy and Matt Smith (who both appear in the television series The Crown) handle Mr. MacMillan’s rapid fire dialogue with aplomb. Indeed, they give deft, rightfully-acclaimed performances that uncannily channel our confused, jumbled times. They’re particularly affecting during the play’s breathtaking closing sequence, which sweepingly pans out, Six Feet Under-style, to reveal their characters’ eventual fates. As with the other In Camera offerings, Mr. Warchus here has managed to attain a level of theatricality and sense of event that have eluded many recent attempts at virtually presenting theater.

RECOMMENDED

LUNGS
The Old Vic / In Camera
1 hour, 20 minutes
Through January 29