Tutto Bene, Mamma? review, The Print Room

The Print Room is the most marvellous place. You enter down a small whitewashed alley on Hereford Road and find yourself in a tiny foyer filled with sweets and a huge bowl of fantastic fruit, all of it there for your consumption. Tonight, because it was hot, we were given beer in plastic cups and invited to sit in the charming little garden round the back, or to hang out front where two cages of finches provide entertainment. It's worth going for that alone.

Darkness on the edge of town

The current production is Tutto Bene, Mamma? by Gloria Mina, recreated in  English by April de Angelis. It takes place in total darkness. The audience is led in by ushers wielding torches, and once they've gone you can't see your hand in front of your face, let alone the three actors who are creating a macabre piece on the central stage around which you are sitting. As an experience it lasts just over an hour and it should be unsettling, but in our party - aged 18 to 81 - it was the story, not the darkness, that was remarked upon.

The story concerns a mother and child.  When she unexpectedly dies, the child continues normal life as her body slowly decomposes. He talks to her, taking money from her purse for food. Then the electricity is cut and we realise we're sharing his darkness. His mother's words of warning are fresh in our heads: it's not darkness that's scary, it's what people do in the darkness. Nobody did anything odd in our darkness. It was rather restful, actually. Which shows that even where there are no visible boundaries, we create them in our minds.

In conclusion: Inconsistencies in the narrative of Tutto Bene, Mamma? are compensated for by its creation of a different sensory experience that includes smells, though thankfully not all the smells alluded to. We never see the actors. It was good craic seeing it as a group, and it's a pleasure to visit The Print Room with its uniquely generous welcome to punters.

References
The Print Room, Tickets
Lyn Gardner review in The Guardian

The Print Room, 34 Hereford Road, London W2 5AJ