MAN TO MAN -WMC LAST DAY TODAY!

Wales Millennium Centre presents a new version of  Man to Man. Today is the last day. IT's not an easy piece to engage with but it's a definite MUST SEE. It is the first full in-house production under the new artistic direction of Graeme Farrow. Translated and adapted by Alexandra Wood from Manfred Karge’s masterpiece ‘Jacke wie Hose’, the production  ' reimagines the one woman show as a visceral and virtuosic piece of physical theatre.'
       After her husband dies, Ella Gericke adopts his identity and continues working his job as a crane operator in order to survive in Nazi Germany. Compromising her own identity for survival, Ella is plunged into a new masculine world of beer, schnapps and poker; a claustrophobic lonely existence dominated by the fear of discovery and the changing face of authority in a volatile twentieth century Germany. In the opening speech, Ella, in the guise of her husband Max, shouts out of her window at the layabout youths on the street corners, “Work will set you free”, and the mantra from the gates of Auschwitz hangs over the entire production until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
    Margaret Ann Bain playing Ella switches from husband to wife and back again with alacrity and virtuosity, changing her accent from the hard consonants of a male Scotland to the softer tones of a female England. Sometimes the switches are so quick-fired that I found myself dizzy trying to keep up. To play yourself and your alter ego and remember your lines for 70 minutes is an amazing feat. 
      The design of set, lighting, video, sound and effects brought together by a team including Richard Kent, Andrzej Goulding, Rick Fisher and others is extraordinary for its ingenuity, atmosphere, mood, and adding layers of suggestion and meaning to this one woman show.

WMC   Weston Studio. Tonight 27 March 2015 at 8pm- box office 029 2063 6464   web site: www.wmc.org.uk