Under The Lintel

There was a moment late on Thursday evening when I came to realise that Richard Schiff, star of television’s West Wing and currently appearing in “Under the Lintel” at the Duchess Theatre in the heart of London’s West End, really is a great actor. The moment came not during the show, but during a “Q&A” afterwards, when someone asked him whether he could give them advice for dealing with their post-West Wing withdrawal symptoms. Schiff screwed up his face and psychically conveyed the expression “get a life” whilst pretending to search for an appropriate answer so as not to give offence.

I liked the Duchess Theatre. Like my companions for the evening, it was small, old and creaky. It struck me as the sort of place where bad things really would happen if an actor were accidentally to give name to the “Scottish Play”.

“Under the Lintel” proved in its own way to be quite a creepy play. A monologue, in the form of a lecture by a Dutch former Librarian who becomes obsessed with tracing an overdue (over-jew?) book which he thinks leads to the trail of the Wandering Jew of Christian legend. As his quest develops, he loses job, girlfriend and eventually sanity, himself becoming a lonely decrepit figure, cursed to wander the world delivering his talk to half-filled theatres mostly containing slightly perplexed Jews who have been sold the play on the basis that it is somehow about them (which it clearly isn’t).

I enjoyed it. The text was well structured and had some lovely moments where themes looped round and repeated with variations. I wasn’t so keen on the accent, but otherwise Schiff was convincing and managed to hold my attention with little danger of my falling asleep (see the Auden reading below!)

Afterwards I ate too much cake and I think my pal Ricardo Silverfish was rude to the waitress who may have spiked my decaf coffee with caffeine in revenge – I dunno, but I had a very troubled night’s sleep. Maybe it was just the ghost of the Wandering Jew.