Anger management

The essence of drama is conflict. Thus, Tacita Dean’s 16mm film portrait of an actor begins with Stephen Dillane circling the stage: a black silhouette waiting to be filled in, swearing liberally. It establishes bad feeling (real, faked?), between Dillane and the artist seated in the audience and is the first of their many plays on art, life and the grey areas in between.

Method in the madness

Dean cuts between four performances, with Dillane’s wigs registering the changes. He shifts mode just as quickly, from Shakespearian swagger to naturalism.

A kind of magic

With the emphasis firmly on illusion and delusion, we get the magician Prospero, a story about puppets and reflections on Dillane’s parents’ dementia; or is this also simply part of the script?

Talk the talk

The charmed circle of the stage is repeatedly conjured and destroyed, but the film offers more than Brechtian alienation amped up to 11. It’s weighty with provocative insight, not least the comparison between the actor, uniquely free to flit between different texts, and people with dementia in a home, enjoying conversation without knowing what it is they’re talking about.

Tacita Dean: LA Exuberance, Frith Street Gallery, W1, to 4 November