The Rehearsal

Eleanor Catton

Victoria University Press

Otago Daily Times, September 13th 2008

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton embodies Hamlet’s existential metaphor of life as performance, in both form and substance.   The fulcrum upon which the action centres is an illicit relationship between a high-school teacher and one of his pupils, scandalising the community and exciting fascination and envy among her school colleagues.  The plot moves between preparations for a musical concert by students of the high school, and a play by the first year students of the adjacent drama school, both shaped by the affair and linked by Isolde, the disgraced girl’s sister.

Catton, a graduate of Bill Manhire’s writing school, takes the risk of discarding realism for a structure that echoes theatrical performance, even as far as including stage directions for some scenes.  Players exchange parts, move between participating in and acting out events, speak in soliloquy with an insight and voice that transcends their nominal role.  This is not an ‘easy’ book; the intellectual cleverness risks alienating some of the audience (I was reminded of the controversy that surrounded the 2005 awarding on the Man-Booker to John Banville’s The Sea) and limited my empathy towards most (although not all) of its characters.  For all that, The Rehearsal is a thoughtful and rewarding exploration of adult/adolescent relationships, the baffling and self-conscious maze of teenage sexual awareness, and its mismatch with social expectations.  All in all, a performance well worth the price of the ticket.