Review: NAYATT SCHOOL REDUX, The Coronet Theatre

If you like your theatre to be undeniably avant-garde, then trot along to Notting Hill's Coronet Theatre and see The Wooster Group's Nayatt School Redux.

Baffling and bewildering – but never boring – this experimental, multi-media production from a New York company that's been going for over 50 years and has included the likes of Willem Dafoe could well be the most unusual stage experience you'll have this year.

Long-standing troupe member Kate Valk kicks off the evening introducing us to old black-and-white footage of monologist Spalding Gray (best known for Swimming to Cambodia), who died in 2004.

In an 80-minute (no interval) reimagining of the original 1978 show held off-Broadway at the Performing Garage theatre in So-Ho, Valk fills in the gaps when parts of the scratchy recording aren't audible.

She also tells us more about Gray, who plays an old LP of T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party. The current cast then reinterprets scenes from the earlier performance in a surrealist fashion. The show reaches its peak with final, climactic sequences from The Cocktail Party.

Using a strange blend of old records and footage alongside Eliot's classic text, elements of slapstick and even drawing-room comedy, it's a peculiar mix. At times it can be a tad confusing, but maybe this is the whole point.

The highlight for me is watching well-drilled actors mimic all the words and actions of the original performers on film. There's a lot going on and they keep up the pace. It's haunting (particularly as some of the previous cast, including Gray, are no longer with us), as well as a technical feat to be highly admired.

All the performers should be applauded for their efforts. Valk stands out in her role as deadpan storyteller gluing the show together. Scott Shepherd (Bridge of Spies, Jason Bourne) and Maura Tierney (ER, The Affair) and a rather zany Andrew Maillet also contribute to the dreamlike proceedings.

Director Elizabeth LeCompte (who also designed the sparse set and created costumes with Enver Chakartash) says she wanted to go back and look at the impulses the company had in the late 1970s and reconstruct Nayatt School for the archives, because no complete record of the piece survives.

I guess LeCompte achieves these aims. But does Nayatt School Redux, with its amalgamation of Eliot's existential emptiness and witty banter from the likes of old radio skits ultimately work?

I can't pretend I know what's going on all of the time or what this production's actually all about, but I do enjoy the high and low art references and technical prowess of the company.

But I feel one step removed emotionally – a criticism levelled at Eliot's dramatic work, which was described as emotionally detached.  Are we still preserving the polite attitudes of the upper middle-classes in 2026? Or is it time to say the party's over and move on.

Nayatt School Redux is at The Coronet Theatre until 25 April