Heisenberg at Arcola Theatre
Simon Stephens’s tight, vivid drama Heisenberg has been welcomed to a new home in Dalston’s Arcola Theatre, where a troubled tale of intergenerational love and lying has been brilliantly adapted into a queer production.
Faline England captivates as the giggly, playful and quietly ruthless Georgie, while Jenny Gallloway keeps the action grounded as the rightfully cautious Alex, an elder lady whom Georgie swoops down upon in a train station and kisses without warning, thereby introducing as if by accident an entanglement that resists escape.
Georgie confesses to Alex all sorts of things – few of them true – but returns often to her longing for her son, newly grown up, who has made use of the independence of his adulthood to put an ocean between them. Her seduction of Alex is revealed quite quickly to be serving as a warm-up to requesting financial support to follow her son to New Jersey in the hope of seeking him out. What fascinates in Stephens’s play is that we do not despise Georgie for the trick she tries to play, and nor do we despise Alex when she, recognising the trick, falls for it all the same.
This production’s adjustment of the central relationship to include two women succeeds without jarring for a moment, for Heisenberg does not present a masculine fantasy of being marked out as an object of fascination by a younger woman, dazzled and then cruelly disillusioned. Rather, the brilliance of Georgie’s approach is that she does not make an appeal to the ego, nor to desire – she offers a combination of entertainment, excitement and sincere friendship, which might sway anyone who lets their guard down. Alex and Georgie are full characters, not archetypes, and they do not rely on gender roles, whether traditional or otherwise, to make complete sense in their reactions and to reflect human journeys that move the audience.
The staging, light and sound of the Arcola’s production are brilliantly measured – with just a couple of chairs and a few outfit changes, exhilarating bursts of music between scenes match the rush of Alex and Georgie’s relationship as it becomes much more intimate, much too quickly – moving from the neutral space of public transport, to Alex’s shop, to Alex’s bedroom, with the younger woman always looking for ways to overstep the polite hospitality offered to her.
The play is named in reference to Werner Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle – Georgie explains to us that this means that it’s not possible to measure something’s location accurately if you are also measuring the speed of its movement. The idea carries weight for her as she broods over the whereabouts of her son, but rather than accepting the limitations it implies, she seeks still to pin him or Alex or someone down as much as she can get away with. Heisenberg reminds us that human beings are not particles nor specimens and invites us to reconsider the effort that will always be wasted, always futile, if we pin our hopes of success on managing to take an accurate measure of another person.
Sylvia Unerman
Photos: Charlie Flint
Heisenberg is at Arcola Theatre until 10th May 2025. For further information or to book, visit the theatre’s website here.
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