Are commercial theatre producers plotting to rid the West End of straight plays altogether? If they go on presenting work as awful as Underneath The Lintel, does it mean they no longer have any real interest in finding serious new plays?
I am driven to ask these questions in the murky light of Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks and Pinter's People, two recent productions that hit the West End and left it stunned, while this stupefyingly dull, off-Broadway monologue by Glen Berger follows on.
It concerns a lonesome Dutch librarian, who keeps a date-stamper hanging round his neck and who becomes obsessed by the identity of the borrower of a book anonymously returned after some 113 years.
This middle-aged Dutchman, who hardly leaves home, let alone his country, discovers a spirit of adventure.
His quest, with clues unbelievably but ingeniously laid, begins with a dry-cleaning docket and a tram ticket. It leads him on to China and Australia.
He tracks the borrower back in time as far as 37AD, discovering not only the man's identity as the Wandering Jew of ancient myth, but his own true self and place in the world. He loses his job and pension but finds a passion and purpose.
The librarian might even be the cursed Jewish wanderer himself, doomed to keep moving back and forth in time.
Your eyes are glazing over already at this metaphysical whodunnit? So they should be. This grave tosh briefly raises questions of God's existence, faith and our place in the world before dropping them again.
The stage resembles a lecture room in Maria Mileaf's listless, musically enhanced production, with blackboard, slides and a chest from which clues to the borrower's identity are taken.
Richard Schiff, star of the American TV series The West Wing, commands the stage alone with confidence.
He achieves, though, the considerable feat of making the librarian - who has no family and rejected one true love, ponderous - boring and emotionally restricted.
He stands there or shambles around, bearded and balding in a black suit. His face lacks expression.
He speaks in what may be an attempt at a Dutch accent. His dull voice remains almost monotonic, some end-of-sentence words swallowed.
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The frequent, awkward, distracting hand gestures are attributable to the actor's unease rather than to any attempt to illuminate a pretentious and preposterous character.
Underneath The Lintel
Duchess Theatre
Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA
