Nocturne

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“Fifteen years ago I killed my sister. There. I said it.” What follows Nocturne’s initial revelation is an unnamed narrator’s sprawling attempt to negotiate the facts of his sister’s accidental death, the subsequent disintegration of the family, and of their hopes for the talented son. For it is facts which threaten to destroy the calmness of his reminiscence: “facts,” he claims, “are flaws.” He must constantly ground himself: “the hip bone is connected to the leg bone.”

It’s somewhat misleading to call Adam Rapp’s text a script: its stylings are far more novelistic. Ostensibly a monologue for more than one character, the text requires an actor who can deliver not only his own lines, but those of his interlocutors, as well as Rapp’s descriptive prosey interjections – and do so with utter conviction. Rapp’s writing certainly provides help, shaping a musicality which can be disrupted or re-tuned to suggest these other voices. The real credit, however, goes to Peter McDonald, the sole cast member. An actor with an intense and agile face, McDonald negotiates the text’s unusual demands while treading precariously between quiet wistfulness and an angry masochism in the drive to articulate the family scar.

One of McDonald’s real strengths is his ability to turn the gaze of his character, wholeheartedly and convincingly, in upon himself. There’s a moment upon entering his dying father’s house when, pausing, he does exactly that. After what seems an unbearably long silence, he breaks the guise: “fifteen years warrants a melodramatic pause,” he tells the audience. “It is an actor’s moment.” Incredibly, this “actor’s moment” seems more real than the intrusive commentary.

Facts, indeed, are flaws. The final stage picture—a chair hanging from a hook and a dangling light—is identical to the opening. Except, that is, for the gentle swinging of the chair. What, then, has changed over the past 120 minutes? What has ruffled the former stillness? Nocturne quietly reveals that the aftermath of tragedy is far more than the sum of its facts. This is a powerful production which steadily pulls apart the leg bone from the hip.