2401 Objects Review
2401 Objects
Analogue
2401 Objects is a play about an amnesiac patient called Henry before and after the operation that led to the loss of his short-term memory. The juxtaposition of the old Henry and the young, played by two different actors is very effective: they maintain the same mannerisms and voice, but a different appearance and situation. The world has changed, but inside Henry has not. All of the characters that appeared on the stage were believable: the compassionate nurse, the heartbroken mother, and the guilty disappointment of the father.
The play is cleverly framed and interrupted with the narrative of Dr Annese, who appears to be giving a lecture. In theatre the audience is conventionally allowed to believe that they are invisible, sitting in the darkness watching the people on stage, believing that they are not aware of you. So when the lights were raised and the character of Doctor Annese talks directly to us and invites us to close our eyes and feel with our hands the position within our own heads of the hippocampi (the parts of the brain that Henry had removed) it is quite disturbing. This connection between actor and audience shatters the fiction of the piece and reminded me this was based on truth. So when we were encouraged to open our eyes again and were faced with the old Henry staring out in to the audience through the reflection of an aged man that he did not recognise as himself, his vulnerability became mine.
Analogue are particular capable of combining live and digital action, and throughout the play they use a screen that sweeps forwards and backwards across the stage changing the scene, and on to which different images are projected.
The clever, almost scientific way that the play was carried out did not undermine its quite emotion. Patient HM ceases to be a medical case and becomes a person.