Prism, theatre review: Poignant study of a master of cinema

After a long silence, during which he worked mainly as a director, playwright Terry Johnson returned last year with a modest tribute to maverick theatre-maker Ken Campbell. Now, in a new full-length drama, he focuses on Jack Cardiff, the cinematographer whose mastery of colour enriched films such as The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus.

Cardiff was known as ‘the man who made women beautiful’, and Johnson imagines his intimate moments with Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. Rather than being a slavishly faithful biographical account, Prism pictures an artist’s farewell to the medium and personalities he helped shape.

Robert Lindsay is Cardiff, in the grip of dementia and bewildered by the most humdrum details of the present — much to the frustration of his wife Nicola (Claire Skinner) and son Mason (Barnaby Kay). But new carer Lucy, who’s given an unfussy practicality by Rebecca Night, is more indulgent of his foibles.

She may profess to be incapable of watching old films, yet she’s willing to listen to him talk about the equipment he once used — including the prism of the play’s title, an optical instrument he calls ‘God’s eyeball’ because it appears to comprehend the secrets of light.

An extended flashback switches the action from Cardiff’s garage at home in Buckinghamshire (packed with memorabilia) to the treacherous set of The African Queen in the Congo jungle, where Skinner and Kay become Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Here we delve into the past, but really we’re deep inside the forest of his mind. His thoughts are complex yet faltering, and the image of the film’s unreliable steamboat, sections of which had to be cut away to make room for Cardiff’s giant Technicolor camera, relates unsettlingly to the erosion of his faculties by brain disease.

Johnson, whose work often involves exhuming famous figures (Freud, Einstein, Alfred Hitchcock), writes intriguingly and sometimes very amusingly about nostalgia, delusion and déjà vu. He offers a poignant vision of Cardiff’s passions — even if he doesn’t illuminate his peculiar ability to conjure atmosphere. The play seems slightly apologetic about not having a powerful narrative engine, but it’s a nice vehicle for Lindsay, who serves up a finely detailed study of querulous uncertainty and fidgety charisma.

Until Oct 14, Hampstead Theatre; hampsteadtheatre.com