Mnemonic, National Theatre review: Goodness, this show drags

, as being one of the most influential pieces of theatre they have ever seen. Twenty-five years on and the piece returns, to the National’s grandest space, the Olivier; audience members are greeted by the startling simplicity of a stage that is bare apart from a single chair with a small stone placed in front of it.

Theatre has, of course, shape-shifted considerably over the past quarter century and what previously appeared so ground-breaking has lost a little of its novelty and lustre since. The first section, easily the strongest, is beguiling: Khalid Abdalla commands the 1000-seat auditorium by musing playfully on the nature of memory and origins.

These musings gradually begin to be overlaid by a series of scenes, too much of which feel only tangentially connected to the opening premise. Abdalla morphs into Omar, bewildered by the disappearance of his girlfriend Alice on the morning of her mother’s funeral. Yet the central focus is upon the, a mummified body from 5000 years ago found buried high up in the Alps.

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‘The boundary between fact and fiction is extremely blurry': Simon McBurney as Mnemonic returns to the theatreHannah Silver is the Art, Culture, Watches & Jewellery Editor of Wallpaper*. Since joining in 2019, she has overseen offbeat design trends and in-depth profiles, and written extensively across the worlds of culture and luxury. She enjoys meeting artists and designers, viewing exhibitions and conducting interviews on her frequent travels.
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