Robert Tanitch reviews Adler & Gibb at Royal Court Theatre, London SW1
Many people are going to be very irritated by Tim Crouch’s latest play, a spoof biography of two fictional conceptual artists, Janet Adler and Margaret Gibb, who integrated art and everyday life.
They created non-events. They had a slogan: “Shoot the wounded! Save yourself!” Asked by a museum to provide one of their art works, they offered a live dog. The museum turned down the offer.
An American student (Rachel Redford) presents an illustrated discourse on them. A film director (Brian Ferguson) and an actress (Denise Gough) want to make a film about them.
Adler is already dead when the play begins. She had spent the last years of her life destroying her work. Gibb (Amelda Brown) is alive and still rasping. She rightly feels her privacy has been invaded by the film makers and resents the actress appropriating her life.
The script satirizes academic language, conceptual art performances and the speeches film stars make at the Oscar ceremony. It is never as funny as you hope it is going to be; and the longer it goes on, the more exasperating it gets. Two very young children act as stage managers and hand bizarre props to the actors.
And just when you think it is all over, a boring film is added in a totally unnecessary coda.
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