The Door, Park Theatre

The brand new Park Theatre, opposite Finsbury Park Underground, hosts a number of performance spaces. Backed by the likes of Sir Ian McKellen and Alan Rickman, a community theatre was born in the fertile soil of the North London neighbourhood. After a six-year search for a building to accommodate new stages, Park was eventually housed in an empty office building – a development we can only applaud.

One of the performances on offer is The Door, an 8fold theatre production in which we are introduced to John (Philip Nightingale). Suffering from insomnia, he reluctantly enters a support group where the two other participants appear all too happy to have their regular sessions. To John, they seem to revel in telling their stories and to indulge in locating the source of their problems. He will not be guided by stern therapist Lisa (played by Adèle Keating), displaying pragmatism of the kind that is not approved of by either her or his fellow sufferers. Nevertheless, Lisa wants to keep trying with John, even when her two regulars storm out of a session after hearing she has tried hypnosis on John outside of the meeting – a promising lead in the plot that unfortunately fails to resurface.

The action is sustained by hallucinatory spells of music and dimmed lights, with John staggering on stage as if something is haunting him. Without disclosing some of the revelations nearer the end, it has to be said that the resemblance to David Fincher’s Fight Club is difficult to ignore. Unlike the film, The Door sees moments of potentially interesting plot twists come out a tad too haphazardly, and it is especially the main character who remains on the surface. John’s anger about his situation is understandable, but in a play that revolves around a tormented man’s psyche there could have been scripted a more layered personality: socially awkward and full of rage, he does not succeed in allowing the audience a glimpse of his inner struggle.

What remains is an unconventional narrative in a simple setting, and in light of the subject matter being the twilight between dream and reality, between sleeping and waking, the occasional abruptness should not be too much of a problem. When John jokingly turns off the lights during a therapy session, the audience shares some of the uneasiness caused, and for a moment we are admitted into the story. Overall, though, the play slithers uneasily between various paths without actually choosing one.

Ambitious The Door certainly is, but the story is lacking in specificity and seems to have trouble in getting to the heart of the matter. While some of the ideas stir the imagination, on the whole it fails to really come off the ground.

The Door is playing at the Park Theatre until 1 December. For more information and tickets, see the Park Theatre website.