We sent our reviewer James to watch Is It Too Late Now To Say Sorry?
Adam Lenson is already apologising as you enter the Red Lecture Theatre at Summerhall and he hands you an index card and pen for the very light bit of audience interaction later in his new show Is it too Late Now To Say Sorry?. This is a lovely touch and makes it clear that you’re dealing with an experienced theatre maker, well-versed in his craft and at making an audience feel at ease right from the outset.
The piece itself is well-handled and technically well put together, managing to elicit the appropriate responses from a number of audience members as it moves along – a wry laugh here, a knowing sigh there, and even the odd tear on occasion. There is a lot of information imparted throughout the hour, ranging from personal anecdotes about times when Lenson has lost his temper and done something for which he wishes he could apologise, to a slew of contemporary public apologies from celebrities who have been called out for actions deemed worthy of repentance to some scientific formulations of apologies. Whilst each is diverting in insolation, the piece never quite manages to tie the personal history into the wider social narrative in a way that sheds particularly new light on either of them.
The moments that we dip into from Lenson’s personal timeline, instances of apparent high emotion are presented as indicative of his continual sense of needing to apologise for everything, almost for existing. This is obviously a fascinating frame of mind and one that no doubt resonates with a lot of people, I know it certainly does with me. But there is little sense of why these moments in particular have been chosen or examination of how they have helped form Lenson’s own relationship to apologies and the societal conventions that surround them.
There are some quite good original songs, some nice projection work, and like I say, a little bit of light audience interaction towards the end. As Lenson himself even points out at one point, in a moment of fittingly almost apologetic meta-narrative, there are seemingly all the pieces here for a ‘Summerhall Fringe Show’. The issue is that they are missing the connective tissue and substance to bring them fully alive. There almost seems to be an apology that this is not the Fringe show Lenson really wanted to make, one that you sense would have brought more anger, and with it perhaps, more insight. I am a firm believer that suffering should not be a prerequisite in order to make art, so it is completely reasonable, no apology necessary, for Lenson to not open that particular box, if indeed that was the case. But if so, it may be that the piece needed to ask different questions.
This is a fascinating premise and one that seems to be becoming more relevant with each passing year. Lenson is an accomplished theatre maker and performer and it is interesting to spend an hour in his company asking yourself, Is It Too Late Now To Say Sorry?
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