“I get this dream”
Repetition and familiarity and connectedness. Those are the cornerstones upon which the play is constructed. In a postmodern way, the play even draws attention to this aspect, such as when all the characters on stage at the time—Neil, Nick, Valerie and Sarah—all say at the same time, “I get this dream.” The imagery then proceeds to reveal the ways in which things are both the same and different at once:
SARA: The tide is coming in and I’m afraid that if I don’t move I’ll be trapped.
NEIL: I’m standing on the edge of a crystal-clear pool of water. I can see the smooth rocks on the riverbed.
NICK: I find the opening of a small path and start to walk down to the water.
VALERIE: I’m walking along a track at the edge of a high cliff. Parts of the cliff-face have fallen away. The further I go, the more dangerous it becomes.
Familiarity Breeds Differences
At times, play can seem to indulge in repetition a little too much. But this is the whole point. The idea is to create a persistent vision of familiarity—from four actors playing multiple characters to stories told by characters about other people who then become characters in the play later one. The familiarity isn’t there to breed contempt, but an ironic awareness that though life is a constant repetition of situations, it is not a constant repetition of reactions:
“No. Love’s not like that. If you love someone, you know it. If you don’t, you know it. I mean, a lot of people kid themselves. A lot of people let love slip into habit. But the truth’s the truth and everybody knows theirs. So do you love your wife?”
Shoes
Whether they qualify more strongly as symbol or imagery is debatable, but that they are not just imagery in the referential sense, but actually physically show up on the stage and in the hands of the characters seems to put the burden of proof on the symbolists. Shoes are of such significance to the story that they make a precise appearance in the stage directions introducing each of the play’s three separate scenes:
Scene 1: SONJA goes back home, LEON tells her a story about a man who wears brown brogues.
Scene 2: NEIL sits at a table and begins to write a letter. He wears brown brogues.
Scene 3: VALERIE is in a phone box at the side of an isolated road. She wears black patent leather shoes.
People are Not the Same All Over
Despite the repetition and familiarity and general sense of déjà vu and the whole conceptual foundation of the been there/done that experience, the play is not about communal experience. The author himself, in the Introduction, makes it quite clear what he is going for when he explains how the narrative “maps an emotional landscape typified by a sense of disconnection and a shifting moral code.” This idea of individualized reactions to an existence absolutely overflowing with events diverging very little from one of us to the next is given its most explicit embodiment in the following imagery contained within a mini-monologue expressed by Jane:
She asked him. She said, ‘Did you do anything to hurt that woman?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And that was enough, Pete. For Paula, that was enough. There is no question. He is innocent… And I envy that, Pete. I envy her simple, unshakeable faith. Because if I was in the same position, if you were suspected for murder and the evidence was overwhelmingly against you, then I think, almost certainly, I would need more than a simple ‘no’ to feel reassured. But, Pete, that should be enough. If things were right between you and me, then that should be enough.
