Incognito, Bush Theatre

The premiere performance of Nick Payne’s Incognito at the HighTide theatre festival generated a flurry of praise. Having already broken records as the youngest ever winner of the Evening Standard’s best play award with the recent Constellations, Incognito has been described as Paine’s best play yet. The Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington described it as ‘a better play in its formal ingenuity and intellectual adventurousness’. This May it transfers to the Bush Theatre for the debut London performance.

Showcasing the structural ingenuity for which he is becoming renowned, Payne entwines three tales to explore the complexities of the human brain. First we are transported back to 1950s America as a pathologist decides to steal Albert Einstein’s brain in the name of scientific development. Then we cross the Atlantic to look at the English approach to neurology in the same era with a depiction of the muddled aftermath of pioneering brain surgery. Finally we end in contemporary London with a bisexual neuropsychologist on the brink of a broken marriage who believes that the brain is an illusion: ‘there is no me, there is no you, and there is certainly no self’.

This web of illusion and identity is reflected in the flitting form and layered intensity of Payne’s writing. The themes of memory, self and free will that he explored so captivatingly in Constellations are recapitulated here. As Payne’s third play in 12 months Incognito is set to be the promising young playwright’s biggest success so far.

Joe Murphy’s direction brings clarity to the separate but overlapping stories, plaiting them together deftly. An engrossing performance is given by Paul Hickey (Saving Private Ryan), Amelia Lowndell (Essex Boys; Taming of the Shrew), Sargon Yelda (Dead Cat) and Alison O’Donell (BBC’s Shetland). Given the rave reviews this show’s brief staging in Suffolk garnered, this is a must-see on the London stage.