The Elephant Man

The Elephant Man, a play based on a true story about a man named Joseph Merrick who suffered from scoliosis and hip disease whom the rest of society at the time of 1862 called ‘’Elephantitus.’’ The play represents the emotional journey of his life from a freak show entertainer to being taken in and educated by Doctor Treves.
The play was hosted by The Hampton Hill Playhouse which was perfectly contemporary enough to take on the Brechtian and analytical style of the play. The director (Scott O Brien) took some very interesting approaches to support the needs of this hard hitting story. With the gauze placed at the back that held real newspaper reports and pictures of the elephant man flashing continuously at the audience, the performance circle in the centre where Merrick spent the entire play on and even the small projector that stated every lesson to be learnt from each scene.
Brenden Leddy who played The Elephant Man did extremely well in maintaining the physicality of his character. In doing so he displayed the pity and humiliating experiences that Merrick had to go through as he was left in a cold bath naked, hunched and scared. His speech was withheld and small to show how he was hidden away by society and told not to question his own sexual needs. Nigel Cole who played Doctor Treves worked particularly well in showing the relationship Treves gains for Merrick as their roles ironically begin to reverse. In one particular scene Merrick evolves his bodily position to Treves and starts analysing him as the human experiment as Treves withers on stage and screams out to the audience ‘’help me’’ as Merrick does at the beginning of the play. Treves questions society as to why they continually torture their bodies to look a certain way when there are others who are less lucky to be seen as normal at all.
       I was very interested to see how this play unravels as I knew that the play production does not take on the facial deformities like the film does. I found it ever more effective and heart- pulling as you are forced to look more at the emotions and needs of the characters rather than staring at the deformities. I found that in this way the audience is forced to question themselves as a society; why do we so want to see a deformed human being? Why are we intrigued by freak shows? Fore shame.


ONE LINE REVIEW: Great use of Brechtian technique etc the screens and performance circle brought something new to this riveting production. Having not witnessed Brecht as an audience member, it captivated y attention to focus on not what was happening but how it happened and how it was being taught.