Issue 15 - 2003
Prompt Corner 
The top shows of this issue, at least in
terms of attention paid, are
My own faith in the RSC was much restored
by their other show in this issue, the joint staging of Pericles with Cardboard Citizens. The last Citizens-related show
I saw was Alan Gilbey’s One Step Beyond, the
original Madness musical, in 1993, which incidentally gave
me much more pleasure than Our House. Once again
they have managed to take a Big Issue and handle it with
wit and invention. Shakespeare’s play is a complicated
one – it used to be considered unstageable
– and you would think that adding an extra layer of
complication by splicing in the stories of present-day asylum-seekers
would make matters far worse. The beginning of the evening,
as we sat at school desks in a huge shed off the Old Kent
Road, studying the Home Office’s daunting immigration
forms and half-listening to a series of earnest testimonies,
did not bode well. Yet as we moved from space to space, encountering
Fred Meller’s brilliantly apposite, boldly expressive
juxtapositions of immigration life and Pericles’ Mediterranean
destinations, the extra layer made more and more sense. Yes,
the levels of performance from Adrian Jackson’s mixed-ability
cast were decidedly variable; yes, whole sections of the
evening were barely audible, as much a result of the cavernous
setting as of any lack of skill among the actors; but what
made the production a thrilling and cumulatively excellent
one was the way in which these very deficiencies were used
to strengthen its very powerful effect. Our own journey became
entwined with those of Pericles (successful in its outcome)
and the asylum-seekers (not always so lucky). It made for
a very Shakespearean mix of the bawdy and the beautiful,
a rich stew of colour (Ms Meller), music (David Baird) and
dance (Liam Steel), every scene an eye-popping discovery,
right down to the kitsch glory of the temple of Diana (Spencer!)
where the final reconciliation is achieved. An experience
to cherish and ponder, faithful to Shakespeare yet creatively
adding to him.
Mucking about with originals is something
which gets many critics foaming. I have to admit that I spent
much of my evening in the park with High Society grumbling
to myself about how far Arthur Kopit’s version differed
from the wonderful 1956 movie, the last gasp of the great
post-war Hollywood musical. Or, as Halliwell puts it, a ‘cold,
flat, dull reworking of The Philadelphia Story’. In
reading the reviews of Ian Talbot’s production, therefore,
you have to check out the critics’ leanings. Is it
a poor reworking of the Philip Barry stage play, its film
version or the musical film – or even Richard Eyre’s
previous stage adaptation?
You could, of course, try coming to it
fresh, as a new work in its own right, and in that case you
would, I think, be pleased with many of the new Kopit gags,
with Gillian Gregory’s very serviceable choreography,
and with some more than competent performances from the female
principals, Annette McLaughlin, Tracie Bennett and the promising
Claire Redcliffe. It’s less easy to admire the male
leads: Hal Fowler at least knows how to deliver a number,
but neither he nor the fish out of water Dale Rapley exactly
sparkle, while Walter van Dyk is embarrassing at every level.
It’s left to veteran Brian Greene to dazzle in an energetic,
larger than life performance which must have made his insurance
company very nervous.
More raves for After Mrs Rochester follow
the rapture it generated in Hammersmith. I wish I could join
in, but I found most of this production pretentious, tiresome
and very short on meaning. That grown-up critics should go
into orbit over a play which for once contains characters
exchanging more than conventional dialogue is not, perhaps,
surprising, but why this ill thought out presentation of
various women thrashing about (or mooning about) on stage
should be hailed as vibrant physical theatre beats me. Very
little of the production’s much-admired movement made
dramatic sense, or contributed to atmosphere, or gave a real
sense of occupying Angela Davies’
awkward set. And as for the two poor men, denied the chance
to thrash about and reduced to conveying the most tedious
gallery of stereotypes … It’s hardly fair to
call the piece derivative when it derives from Polly Teale’s
own, rather better 1997 Jane Eyre, but quite a lot of it was also better done in Joan Wiles’s
1993 adaptation of Jean Rhys’s autobiographical Voyage
in the Dark, revived by Sphinx in 1996.
Watching The Last Days of Empire at
the Watermill was a journey back in time, not so much to
its own Fifties world of dying variety but to those joyfully
inconsequential Sixties evenings when its author, Alan Plater,
would chat over a pint or two with Henry Livings and make
great entertainment out of very little. Plater’s play
meanders along in the same way, and if you’re in no
hurry provides gentle pleasure. John Doyle makes his mark,
with all the cast picking up their instruments for a rousing
John Dankworth finale, and when they are better acquainted
with their lines the show will probably develop the pace
it badly needs. It’s curious that Mr Plater, who shows
great affection for the second-rate acts he mourns, should
complain so bitterly about television killing the halls.
He himself, after all, has done very well out of TV, where
he has produced much better work than for the stage.
Ian Herbert
At the Back
'The world seems to be crumbling around us,' says the fortune-teller in David Mamet's short, poignant 1982 play Edmond: Twenty-three stops in a man's journey into hell, from well-off husband to broken man, as he leaves his wife and normal life to stumble into New York gutters overflowing with whores, drug-dealers and killers. Twenty-one years later, Edward Hall shows us with breathtaking pace and sinister colouring a world that is as unsafe as ever, a western society that hasn't been able to stop its decay. On Michael Pavelka's kind of concrete stage punctuated with props and atmospherically lit (Mark Henderson), Kenneth Branagh plays the conjuror, changing his expressions, moods, voice with a chameleon-like manner and living out an everyman's agonizing nightmare of fear, hate, abuse and murder. Though Branagh is a star name, this production thrills as a mesmerizing ensemble work: twenty actors bring the essence of their characters to boiling point without extinguishing Mamet's minimalistic poetic touch. The apartment scene, in which Edmond kills Glenna (a superb Nicola Walker), epitomizes the whole play: Seldom have I seen such a psychologically gruesome, brilliantly acted build up of a fight. At the end Edmond, imprisoned for manslaughter, knows that 'Every fear hides a wish' and asks himself if Hell exists, hoping 'Perhaps it's Heaven'. This frenzied ride through a crumbling world is definitely a highlight.
Last year I praised Branagh for his Richard III in Michael Grandage's perspicacious and vigorous Sheffield production, fusing sweetness and vulnerability with malevolence and sarcasm in an explosive evening. I wish I could do the same with Sean Holmes's Stratford direction and Henry Goodman's performance as a power hungry political killer, but I can't. This Richard lacks the grandeur, the irony and the fear written into the character by Shakespeare. Holmes puts the emphasis on Richard as a kind of theatrical killer-clown, set out at great length during the opening soliloquy, which introduces Goodman as an Edwardian theatre director who suddenly transforms into the villain's disabled body. What made Chaplin's The Great Dictator unforgettable, Holmes doesn't achieve: sugaring the evil with a comic coating that tastes sweet but is pure acid. No question, Goodman is an excellent actor (his Shylock at the Cottesloe remains definitive), but here he loses himself in either too much superficial grimacing, or the contrary - the wooing of Anne is completely underplayed. There's some good company work, though Sheila Reid's Queen Margaret is too much of mad baglady.
The multimedia show Alladeen is a fascinating modern fairy tale of archaic wish fulfilment, manipulation, and faked identities brought to life by high technical skills, 3D virtual reality wizardry, superb sound and live staging. Our flight across the world takes off in New York outside a Virgin Megastore (digitally assembled), where a woman talks non-stop on her mobile phone. The second scene takes us to a call centre in Bangalore: young, verbally talented Indians (smashingly acted by the company) are turned into operators, learning to switch into an American or any Western accent. Book a flight and you might be connected to one of these young people, who carries a stolen identity (maybe a character from Friends), feels forced in the wake of 9/11 to hide his Muslim belief, and has to turn night into day because of the time difference. The idea of dealing with modern problems through an old tale is intriguing, but lacks dramatic depth.
Jason Carr's musical adaptation of Kingsley's Victorian children's novel The Water Babies (with book by Gary Yershon) works out well as a family entertainment in Chichester. The original never reached my Austrian shelf of children books, but it seems that this version shows all the necessary moments with a bit of moralising and lots of fun (especially the water babies on their scooters, which made me laugh tears, and the deliciously comic and charismatic Louise Gold doing the fairies). Jeremy Sams keeps the action flowing, though the beginning lacks period spirit and a kind of 'Sweeney Todd' kitchen scene is far too gruesome for the little ones. The music is an all-round mix from Sondheim, 'Les Mis', and Music Hall to atmospheric background sound.
This is the story of the The Coffee House in Chichester. Once upon a time there was La bottega del caffè, Goldoni's colourful Venetian commedia exposure and ridicule of shameless lies and betrayal over which female wit and the hope that immorality can be mended win. Then in 1969 it became Fassbinder's dark Kaffeehaus, where corruption rules, everyone is easily bought and society is hopelessly lost in its love for money (the original production showed the exchange rate from 'Zechine in Dollar, Pfund und Mark' as subtitles) - and here the couple's reunion is a false happy end. Finally we have Jeremy Sams' English Coffee House under Italian Simona Gonella's management. Though I'm not entirely happy with this strange mixture of too many tastes, it has to be said that an excellent company makes this brew definitely worth a sip.
Verena Winter
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
AFTER MRS ROCHESTER transfer of play by Polly Teale (Shared Experience) |
Duke of York's |
22 Jul |
947 |
|
ALLADEEN The Builders Association with Moti Roti (BITE) |
Barbican |
22 Jul |
26 Jul |
951 |
CANARIES SOMETIMES SING Frederick Lonsdale revival |
Old Red Lion |
24 Jul |
10 Aug |
962 |
EDMOND revival of play by David Mamet |
Olivier |
17 Jul |
4 Oct |
935 |
END OF THE NIGHT play by Andrew Cartmel |
White Bear |
17 Jul |
3 Aug |
952 |
THE END OF THE SENTENCE play by Jeremy Freeson |
Finborough |
18 Jul |
9 Aug |
950 |
FUNNY BLACK WOMEN ON THE EDGE return of show written by Angie le Mar |
T R Stratford E15 |
17 Jul |
9 Aug |
950 |
HAMLET revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Royal Observatory, Greenwich |
29 Jul |
10 Aug |
964 |
HIGH SOCIETY musical based on Cole Porter, book by Arthur Kopit |
Open Air |
24 Jul |
13 Sep |
953 |
INFLUENCED play by Nick Campbell |
Etcetera |
24 Jul |
10 Aug |
965 |
OEDIPUS THE KING Sophocles revival in E F Watling translation |
The Scoop, SE1 |
18 Jul |
3 Aug |
944 |
PAINS OF YOUTH Ferdinand Bruckner revival in Simon Day version |
BAC 2 |
24 Jul |
17 Aug |
945 |
PARTY TIME/ONE FOR THE ROAD revival of two plays by Harold Pinter |
BAC 1 |
22 Jul |
17 Aug |
963 |
THE PEN IS ... play by Ed Cottrell |
Barons Court |
22 Jul |
10 Aug |
965 |
PERICLES revival of the play by William Shakespeare (RSC/Cardboard Citizens) |
Old Kent Road |
24 Jul |
9 Aug |
958 |
SOUL READER play by James Michalos (Modus Operandi) |
Etcetera |
17 Jul |
3 Aug |
943 |
STONES IN HIS POCKETS transfer of play by Marie Jones (Lyric, Belfast) |
New Ambassadors |
21 Jul |
946 |
|
A WOMAN, A DOG, A WALNUT TREE play by Vincent McInerney |
Landor |
24 Jul |
16 Aug |
965 |
Regions |
||||
THE COFFEE HOUSE Carlo Goldoni revival , adapted Rainer Werner Fassbinder, translated Jeremy Sams |
Minerva, Chichester |
24 Jul |
24 Aug |
974 |
THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE play by Alan Plater, music by John Dankworth |
Watermill, Newbury |
25 Jul |
30 Aug |
976 |
RICHARD III revival of the play by William Shakespeare (RSC) |
Royal Shakespeare, Stratford |
23 Jul |
8 Nov |
966 |
SUGAR DADDIES play by Alan Ayckbourn |
Stephen Joseph, Scarborough |
22 Jul |
13 Sep |
977 |
THE WATER BABIES musical by Jason Carr, with book by Gary yershon, based on Charles Kingsley |
Chichester Festival |
17 Jul |
31 Aug |
972 |
Pitlochry Festival 2003 |
||||
CHARLES DICKENS: THE HAUNTED MAN revival of the play by John Clifford |
15 Jul |
18 Oct |
984 |
|
DOUBLE INDEMNITY revival of the play by David Joss Buckley from the novel by James M Cain |
15 May |
13 Oct |
982 |
|
MAN AND SUPERMAN revival of the play by George Bernard Shaw |
26 Jun |
17 Oct |
983 |
|
THE MATCHMAKER revival of the play by Thornton Wilder |
10 May |
16 Oct |
981 |
|
THE STEAMIE revival of the lay by Tony Roper with music by David Anderson |
22 May |
18 Oct |
983 |
|
STEPPING OUT revival of the play by Richard Harris |
8 May |
15 Oct |
982 |
|