A man in his pyjamas is lying on the floor. As he hovers between life and death, he’s visited by a tousle-haired, tartan-clad apparition – a heady mix of Jesus Christ, Neil Oliver and Braveheart. Perhaps this is an angel, or perhaps he’s just a projection of the dying man’s fading subconscious. But whatever his true nature, there are two things we can be sure of: he’s read a few books on philosophy, and he just can’t wait to tell us what he’s learned.
The dying man, to be fair, enjoys a bit of monologuing too – and he gets in first with a nihilist manifesto, filled with angst about the futility of living and the cruelty of bringing children into a pointless world. You’d forgive the tartan angel for disappearing in a puff of ennui, but instead he responds with a philosophy of his own, which he develops from first principles before our very eyes. His conclusion is that we’re all part of a single collective consciousness (I’m assuming he’s thinking more Gaia than Borg), and that the key to fulfilment is found in embracing the true meaning of the titular “absence of separation”. Spoiler: it’s love.
As a worldview founded in faith, this would of course deserve respect, but it’s presented here as an incontrovertible truth which can be calculated using logic alone. In a change of pace, the angel becomes a lecturer; I let out an inner groan as he literally set up a blackboard. Crouching on the floor, chalk flying, he demonstrates how all the world’s ills are caused by the way we look at rainbows. I’m summarising there, but I’m honestly not making it up.
Among other gems: there is no past and no future, only the “now”; if you follow it far enough downwards, a single wave contains the whole ocean; and “your atoms are forged in dying stars”. These are all thoughts I might have found profound in my wide-eyed younger days, but which have lost their lustre with the wisdom of age and an absence of marijuana.
In similar vein, an interminable discussion of a cup – whether the object itself is a cup, or the word “cup” is a cup, or a cup exists only in your own mind – is the stuff of an A-level philosophy course, not a stepping-stone to a life-changing revelation. Later, with his viewpoint transformed, our pyjama-clad voyager puts socks on his hands and pushes a radish across the floor. Shortly thereafter, he announces that he’s “laminated Satan” and put him in a shoe. If this is what it’s like to be enlightened, then I think I might be fine the way I am.
But here’s the thing. The script is adrift on an ocean of piffle, but the performances are tight and purposeful; at times, in fact, they’re superb. Both actors are fully in command of their extraordinarily wordy dialogue, and they do successfully impart a sense of energy and urgency to their highly abstract theme. The occasional outbreaks of physical theatre can feel a little out-of-context, but they’re fluid and eloquently choreographed; the addition of close-harmony singing, meanwhile, is an unexpected highlight.
The tartan angel is an intriguing character too; I like the way that he appears on the scene less than fully-formed, as ignorant of his role as his unwitting host is. I tried hard to follow along with his epiphany – I honestly did – but the holes in his logic are just too obvious, the non-sequiturs too apparent to ignore. Since we’re “doing” philosophy, I’m reminded of Baruch Spinoza, who’s often said to have published a mathematical proof of faith but really just argued that God exists if you think he does. In the same way, after an hour of earnest analysis, this play ends up where it started: no questions have been meaningfully answered, and the man’s still there on the floor.