Issue 19 - 2003
Prompt Corner 
The quote of the fortnight overleaf isn't exactly fair, but it happened to fit the space. It's wretched that the RSC's current season (including the Titus Andronicus reviewed in these pages) won't reach London, but this is the last sad legacy of the Noble/Foy regime. We might be better off now looking forward to Michael Boyd's new plans than rubbing the RSC board's nose in past failures. Vikki Heywood, now taking the administrative helm at Stratford, found the Royal Court a very successful West End home. Let's hope she can repeat the formula - but not in outer Kensington, please.
Meanwhile Mr Noble is back at the Haymarket with a potboiling revival of A Woman of No Importance which comes surprisingly to life in its melodramatic second half. After a lukewarm first half featuring bored actors drawling epigrams, it's a pleasant shock to find Samantha Bond making powerful sense of Mrs Arbuthnot's terribly old-fashioned and very long speech of self-justification. Rupert Graves is magnetic, too, as Wilde's baddie. These two bring it within range of the RSC's last, vastly more elegant but rather more superficial, revival, by Philip Prowse a decade ago. (See p1289 for Prowse's farewell production for the Citz in Glasgow, Venice Preserved - as stylish as ever.)
Revivals are the order of the day in this issue: Corin Redgrave and Annie Casteldine have opened the impressive new Lichfield Garrick with a so-so Recruiting Officer; Sean Holmes' excellent staging of Miller's The Price has earned its West End run and Harriet Walker is touring to acclaim in The Deep Blue Sea. Those who have seen both productions can make their comparisons between Rattigan, at his peak in 1952, and John Osborne, on the way down with his 1968 The Hotel in Amsterdam, and wonder now at the gulf in skills between the two. Nothing happens in Amsterdam, to a set of characters whose only interest lies in their self-obsession, until a final (offstage) revelation whose melodramatic banality would have given even Oscar Wilde pause. Yet just as you can't resist Rupert Graves in the Wilde, so Tom Hollander takes the Osborne ego-booster role and makes it his own in a shattering display of perfectly judged movements, gestures and above all vocal bravura. It's the kind of performance that raised Mojo several notches above its real level, and it does the same for Osborne's quite unnecessary drama, again without eclipsing a very good supporting cast.
The most revealing revival, though, was of Shaw's essay
on the Irish question John Bull's Other Island. Michael
Taylor's lavish but unwieldy sets can't dampen this impish
evening, which finds Shaw in an unusually romantic mood that
doesn't divert us from his political acuity. What's most
remarkable is that a play which still has much to say about
Rat Pack Confidential was the best of the issue's entertainments, largely because it aimed higher: its revelations about its subjects were interesting enough to overcome resistance to the fact that its actors barely resembled the aforesaid subjects. I hope the sound balance is better by now. Cyberjam doesn't sound nearly as much fun as its forebear Blast! and what Bea Arthur is doing at the Savoy beats me completely. There was a huge reaction from an audience who seemed besotted with the thin fare served up by this dear old soul, who kept them entertained with recipes, off-colour jokes and the story of her completely unremarkable life. I gave up early. I didn't even try to see Michael Barrymore, but readers can wonder at the Daily Mail's decision to follow Michael Coveney's perfectly reasonable review with a far more vicious attack two days later.
So many shows appear in this issue that some of the good work on the Fringe goes almost unnoticed. Even Henry Adam's brilliant People Next Door got little attention when rushed in to Stratford East. Another Traverse show. Heather Raffo's Nine Parts of Desire, suffered a similar fate at the Bush. Look carefully, therefore, at some of the productions that get only a quick nod, like Tony Haygarth's scholarly Dark Meaning Mouse at the Finborough or Kay Adshead's Soho Animal (you can probably ignore Tariq Ali's The Illustrious Corpse at the same venue). Improbable's Sticky falls into this category too. Lyn Gardner has already raved about it, and Belfast audiences can catch it in their Festival next month. I stood at the back of the ten thousand who watched it on the South Bank, and wouldn't have known about the bustling tapemeisters working away at ground level without reading the reviews. But the aerial display and its accompanying fireworks made it an event to treasure - what a pleasure to be part of such an unthreatening London crowd.
The usual baffled sneers greeted Robert Wilson's latest visit to the capital, with The Temptation of St Anthony. Unlike the fashionably stupid first night audience, the multi-ethnic second night crowd had a great time, enchanted by the show's colour and playfulness, thrilled by the richness of Bernice Johnson Reagon's a capella score. I was glad to take part in this mix of sheer entertainment and spiritual exploration. Ian Herbert
At the Back
No "At the Back" this issue
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ANIMAL play by Kay Adshead (The Red Room) |
Soho |
10 Sep | 27 Sep | 1221 |
BEA ARTHUR AT THE SAVOY solo season |
Savoy |
15 Sep | 18 Oct | 1248 |
BYE BYE BIRDIE revival of Michael Stewart/Lee Adams/Charles Strouse musical |
Landor |
16 Sep | 11 Oct | 1254 |
CYBERJAM performance musical |
Queens |
23 Sep | 1230 | |
DANCE LIKE A MAN play by Mahesh Dattani |
Watermans |
19 Sep | 29 Sep | 1222 |
DARK MEANING MOUSE play by Tony Haygarth |
Finborough |
11 Sep | 4 Oct | 1241 |
THE FAIR MAID OF THE WEST John Waters adaptation of Heywood plays |
Pleasance |
12 Sep | 5 Oct | 1250 |
GOB revival of Jim Kenworth play |
Courtyard |
23 Sep | 19 Oct | 1265 |
THE HOTEL IN AMSTERDAM revival of the play by John Osborne |
Donmar |
17 Sep | 15 Nov | 1260 |
THE ILUSTRIOUS CORPSE play by Tariq Ali (Haymarket, Leicester) |
Soho |
10 Sep | 27 Sep | 1223 |
JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND revival of the play by Geroge Bernard Shaw |
Tricycle |
15 Sep | 25 Oct | 1251 |
LAST SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE musical by Peter Quilter |
Greenwich |
16 Sep | 20 Sep | 1268 |
MICHAEL BARRYMORE: LIVE ON STAGE! comedian |
Wyndham's |
15 Sep | 18 Sep | 1244 |
MRS RUSKIN play by Kim Morrissey (Theatre Metropolis) |
Warehouse, Croydon |
12 Sep | 5 Oct | 1259 |
MUD Maria Irene Fornes revival |
Arcola |
10 Sep | 27 Sep | 1224 |
NINE PARTS OF DESIRE solo play by Heather Raffo |
Bush |
12 Sep | 4 Oct | 1229 |
THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR play by Henry Adam (Traverse, Edinburgh) |
T R Stratford E15 |
10 Sep | 11 Oct | 1254 |
THE PRICE Arthur Miller revival |
Apollo |
11 Sep | 1232 | |
RAT PACK CONFIDENTIAL play by Paul Sirett from the book by Shaun Levy |
Whitehall |
18 Sep | 1266 | |
RED ON BLACK Andrew Bridgemont play |
Hen & Chickens |
19 Sep | 4 Oct | 1241 |
RED WINGS: on the Rocks with Richard Burton solo play by Richard Waters |
Latchmere |
18 Sep | 5 Oct | 1243 |
THE RIOT ACT Tom Paulin version of Sophocles' Antigone |
Gate |
17 Sep | 11 Oct | 1228 |
THE SIEGE Iain Landles play |
White Bear |
18 Sep | 5 Oct | 1224 |
STICKY devised by Improbable Theatre and The World Famous |
Jubilee Gardens |
13 Sep | 13 Sep | 1236 |
TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT revival of play by Christopher Marlowe adapted by Ben Power |
Rose |
12 Sep | 22 Sep | 1242 |
THE TEMPTATION OF ST ANTONY Flaubert adaptation with songs by Bernice Johnson Reagon |
Sadler's Wells |
11 Sep | 15 Sep | 1239 |
THIS STORY OF YOURS revival of play by John Hopkins |
New End |
18 Sep | 11 Oct | 1225 |
TROOP play by Maggie Kirwan |
Etcetera |
18 Sep | 5 Oct | 1265 |
THE WAR IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE WAR play by Patrick Jones |
ICA |
15 Sep | 20 Sep | 1268 |
WHEN THE WORLD WAS GREEN (A Chef's Tale) play by Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin |
Young Vic Studio |
18 Sep | 12 Oct | 1226 |
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE revival of play by Oscar Wilde |
T R Haymarket |
16 Sep | 1255 | |
Regions |
||||
ARTHUR, the story of a king devised by Andy Cannon, Iain Johnstone and David Trouton (Wee Stories) |
Kings, Edinburgh |
13 Sep | 20 Sep | 1287 |
BECKETT SHORTS revival of three plays by Samuel Beckett: Play/FootfallsNot I |
Arches, Glasgow |
23 Sep | 4 Oct | 1295 |
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY revival of the play by Harold Pinter |
Tron, Glasgow |
20 Sep | 27 Sep | 1291 |
THE CHRYSALIDS play by David Harrower from the novel by John Wyndham |
Tron, Glasgow |
10 Sep | 13 Sep | 1286 |
THE DEEP BLUE SEA revival of the play by Terence Rattigan |
Richmond/tour |
22 Sep | 27 Sep | 1280 |
DON'T LOOK BACK conceived and created by Tristan Sharps (Dreamthinkspeak) |
South Hill Park, Bracknell |
16 Sep | 21 Sep | 1285 |
THE FOUR TWINS play by Copi (Raul Taborda Damonte |
Citizens Stalls, Glasgow |
17 Sep | 11 Oct | 1288 |
JULIUS CAESAR revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh |
20 Sep | 18 Oct | 1293 |
KIDNAPPED adapted by Alasdair McCrone and Robert Paterson from Robert Loius Stevenson |
Perth |
19 Sep | 4 Oct | 1292 |
KING DOM CUM devised and performed by Neil Francis and Lucy Gaizely |
Arches, Glasgow |
18 Sep | 20 Sep | 1296 |
RED SUN play by David Rudkin (AJTC) |
Traverse, Edinburgh / tour |
17 Sep | 20 Sep | 1291 |
THE RECRUITING OFFICER revival of the play by George Farquhar |
Lichfield Garrick |
16 Sep | 27 Sep | 1277 |
THE RINK revival of the musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb |
Belgrade, Coventry |
11 Sep | 4 Oct | 1275 |
A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP play by Sara Clifford (Three Legged TC) |
T R Studio, York/tour |
11 Sep | 27 Sep | 1285 |
A STAR DANCED written by John Doyle with music by Sarah Travis |
Watermill, Newbury |
15 Sep | 25 Oct | 1275 |
TITUS ANDRONICUS revival of the play by William Shakespeare (RSC) |
Royal Shakespeare, Stratford |
23 Sep | 7 Nov | 1269 |
TWELFTH NIGHT revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Royal Exchange, Manchester |
15 Sep | 25 Oct | 1276 |
UNSEX ME HERE written and performed by Skye Loneragan |
Arches, Glasgow |
17 Sep | 19 Sep | 1294 |
VENICE PRESERVED revival of the play by Thomas Otway |
Citizens, Glasgow |
19 Sep | 11 Oct | 1289 |
WIDE SARGASSO SEA adapted by Jon Pope from the novel by Jean Rhys |
Citizens Circle Studio, Glasgow |
18 Sep | 11 Oct | 1288 |
WINGS OF DESIRE by Alan Lyddiard from the film by Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger |
Newcastle Playhouse |
11 Sep | 19 Sep | 1274 |