Confessions Of A Cultural Spy
Director: Mark Johnson
The Garage International
Season closed


Actor/Director Mark Johnson's 'Confessions Of A Cultural Spy' is a charming piece of writing, delivered in the velvet tones of an experienced story teller.

The tale itself is wonderfully fantastical - Johnson is approached by President Jimmy Carter and asked if he will go to Europe to explore its culture and report back on so that Americans and Europeans will better understand one another. His cover will be a teacher. He will in fact be a cultural spy.

Johnson sets his scene in Switzerland, where his character after the fall of the Carter administration, loses himself in his new life barely remembering why he came.

That is until a statue is delivered to his home and the date on it is from the 1800s.

As memories flood back of his original task, Johnson begins to have mini-flashbacks in time as if he was one of many great Swiss artists and theologians three centuries past. Johnson's performance is carefully measured and sure in itself, assisted by simple but effective shifts in lighting to indicate present and past.

The production seems torn between two identities; a 'Da Vinci Code' like thriller in which Johnson seeks the answers to a puzzle involving three artists and an urge to proselytise on the art and history of Switzerland. Given that Johnson in real life is head of the Arts Department at Institute Montana, an international school in central Switzerland, this is understandable. However the piece tends to lurch more towards lecture than theatre in many instances, spoiling the quite beautifully constructed concept the play is based on.

David O'Brien