Issue 20 - 2003
Prompt Corner 
To start with a brazen declaration of interest, I have to warn the Record's subscribers that some of their subscriptions are embezzled in Anything Goes. The last (and only) time I invested in a West End show before was decades ago, when I took a punt on a similarly copper-bottomed musical revival, On Your Toes. It got rave reviews, played for a year at the Palace, and lost me most of what I put in.
This time around your money looks safer, and I hope it might even help pay for some of this year's increases in printing and postage costs. It's against this background that I remind you that I didn't actually go overboard for Anything Goes at the Olivier. Its opening was confusing, and the unconscionably long evening, while blessed with some great numbers, took a long time to get off the ground.
Now I can join Alastair Macaulay in saying how much better and tighter the production is, coming in at well under three hours instead of the original three and a half. All the performances have settled beautifully, and if Barrie Ingham looks only a shadow of the late, beloved Denis Quilley it may be because his part has borne the brunt of the cuts, which actually helps improve the show's balance. Gareth Valentine and his band are still magnificent, and the huge dance numbers achieve much more bite and focus on the relatively confined Drury Lane Stage. No wonder the reviewers are unanimous this time. Phew!
The other West End openings in this issue were not so well received, with See U Next Tuesday, another mini-evening for the dinner-after-show set, receiving the rather unladylike description from Kate Bassett of a 'gilded turd' that should be flushed away as soon as possible. The poor Camut Band, too, were dismissed as garbage by both Michael Coveney and Charles Spencer, the latter using most of his review space for a rant about the state of the West End that forms our Quote of the Fortnight. I didn't see either (my excuse is the Havana Festival - see below), but can hardly regret it.
Mixed reactions greeted the work on the
inner ring. Everyone except Nicholas de Jongh liked Neil
Bartlett's Hammersmith Pericles. Lars Noren's Blood ('phoney
baloney' - Charles Spencer, 'highbrow hokum' - Paul Taylor)
and Clare McIntyre's The Maths Tutor fared rather
worse, though Messrs Spencer and Taylor (the Balliol Babes)
liked the latter. My preference is for Blood. Lars
Noren, like Jon Fosse and too many others, has never found
a public in
Beside Noren's dark musings, the banal middle-class platitudes and mini-dilemmas of The Maths Tutor don't stack up very well. The play comes across like a series of exercises written by (and for) well-meaning social workers, and is about as gripping.
The only other London performance I attended in these two weeks brought one of those classic moments: the Greenwich Playhouse audience for the last preview of The Happiness Compartment consisted of the author-director, a passing agent, and (as they pretentiously put it) this reviewer. Steven Dykes' young cast battled bravely in such a barren atmosphere, and delivered a commendable account of this fascinating, highly intelligent play, an examination of the impact of the Kennedy assassinations on all-American dreams. Writing in an insistent rhythm that is almost verse, Dykes makes great demands on his audience, but offers great stimulus to those with the stamina to absorb his thesis on the place of glamour in the making of history. I think Lars Noren would like this play.
Off you go into the issue, then: look out
for debuts from Mark Akrill, Ben Glanfield and especially
Mark Norfolk; discover the latest from Clean Break and Cardboard
Citizens; marvel at David Farr and Michael Grandage joyfully
reinventing Shakespeare, not to mention some acrobatic Icelanders;
witness Goebbels and Eichmann on separate stages; follow
Forced Entertainment and Ridiculusmus to the outer edges
of performance. Amid the hokum, the baloney and the downright
turds you will find gems, I promise.
Ian Herbert
HAVANA THEATRE FESTIVAL
Havana Daydreaming
The eleventh Havana International Theatre Festival was held this year from 18-28 September, eleven intensive days of performances in and out of the theatre, coupled with meetings, conferences and workshops. The festival is held every two years, and sets out to show a wide variety of Cuban work, from prize-winning plays, dance and musicals to street theatre, children's theatre and puppetry, the last a strong tradition in the island. Its international component is dependent on those companies who can pay their own way to this cash-strapped outpost of socialism.
The Cubans love their theatre. From the ornate and beautiful opera house, the Gran Teatro in central Havana, to tiny halls in the suburbs, all the city's performing spaces can expect packed houses, with young people in the majority. Some of this enthusiasm can be explained by the fact that tickets (except for the opera) are very cheap, usually the equivalent of 20c US. However, when you recall that the average wage in Cuba is no more than US$10 a month, they don't seem quite so cheap.
The quality of Cuban acting is good, perhaps reflecting the fact that actors who graduate from the institute of scenic arts are guaranteed a salary. Productions are of variable quality, with a number of established groups playing in their own theatres, others having to search for spaces. All are funded on a project basis, with most of the work being centred on the capital - some regional areas boast little or no theatre, in spite of state-set targets for cultural activity.
In six days of the festival I saw something of the range of Cuban theatre and dance, though not necessarily its quality: Buendias, the country's leading group, were away on tour, and several major shows happened outside the time of my short visit. Another was cancelled due to an injury to its leading actor, and an eagerly awaited premiere was postponed because the scenery was not yet ready. My first exposure was a visit to the National Theatre, a large Soviet-style building with several performance spaces. A favourite among actors, I was told, was this one, the Ninth Floor, which turned out to be the National's rehearsal room, approached only by the theatre's capacious goods lift (safety officers, cover your ears) or in real emergency by nine floors of totally unlit stairs. Argos Teatro's revival of Bernard-Marie Koltés' Roberto Zucco featured a young and talented cast, moving easily on Alain Ortiz's clever sets. . Carlos Celdran's strong production added its own shabby glamour to Koltés' dark world by dressing many of the play's onlookers as hookers and pimps, but succeeded admirably in conveying the blunt amorality of this disturbing piece.
Later in the week I made two return visits to this space, the first for a performance by two actors from Puerto Rico of Quintuplets, a play by the state's leading playwright, Luis Rafael Sanchez, about the Morrison quins. It made a useful showcase for Idalia Perez Garay, playing three of the sisters in succession, but I suspect I would have warmed more to the group in their other offering, Ay, Carmela. The second was to a rehearsal by the Cuban Contemporary Dance Company of their full-length piece, Compas, remarkable for its imaginative use of a full troupe of two dozen dancers, filling the stage with whirling movement - and breaking off to teach some of it to the audience!
The Teatro Mella is an attractive modern thousand-seater, with a little of the art deco cinema about it. Here I saw the result of an interesting experiment: a number of Havana's non-professional street performers were given the opportunity to develop works for the stage, and present them for a half share of the box office. La Divina Moneda, from (believe it) the Centre for the Promotion of Humour, is a bawdy satire on the power of the dollar played out by a cast in suits reminiscent of the Greek satyr plays, complete with huge phalluses and matching vaginas (which are put to graphic use as detachable puppets in a ribald moment of simulated intercourse). The evening's content was hardly sophisticated, but the performers' skills in music and circus arts endeared them to a very enthusiastic local audience.
The other play I saw in this space was a considerable contrast, as the Pan Asian Repertory Company did very well to convert the production of Rashomon which they had staged in a New York 70-seater to the wide open spaces of the Mella stage.
Pan Asian Rep would have been more at home in the Sala Llaurado, a comfortable little theatre in the elegant suburb of Vedado, where El Zapato Sucio (The Dusty Shoe) was played, an example of new Cuban writing from Amado del Pino. A variant on the story of the prodigal, its chief invention lay in the two dream figures who bring the past to life as background to this father-son confrontation; but its undoubted star was the live cockerel passed from hand to hand throughout the action.
Two other Cuban shows I caught were decidedly fringe events in terms of their venues, but valuable contributions to the panorama. In the ironically named City Hall, a small, semi-derelict cinema far enough from the city centre to have the only half-full house of my visit, Miriam Munoz from the provincial city of Matanzas led her own production of Egon Wolff's Paper Flowers with a fine performance on a terrific set by Rolando Estévez. While in neighbouring La Villa, I crammed into the town's even tinier theatre to watch a group for tomorrow, actor-puppeteers Palpito, play to an enthralled group of schoolchildren, the audience of tomorrow.
Even more exotic was the setting for a staged reading devoted to the life and works of José Marti, Cuba's great writer-rebel, by Teatro Escambray. This long-established regional touring group continues an old Cuban tradition in which factory workers were read to as they worked. In the Partagas cigar factory, I was as much absorbed by the audience, a hundred or more highly skilled folk rolling Romeo y Julietas and Monte Cristos, as with Escambray's earnest effort, which for that morning replaced the more usual readings from the daily press.
Many of the international shows in the Festival - more than a dozen countries were represented - were street theatre, and several suffered from a series of violent tropical storms that played havoc with schedules. Hyun-Jang came from Korea to overcome the weather with Chuibari, a work that showed high production values in its use of traditional masks, costumes and musical accompaniment, but sadly low aims in putting them to the service of childish anti-capitalist satire.
Back indoors, they were hanging from the rafters of the Café Bertolt Brecht, where a successful local conflation of Bert's Mahagonny and Threepenny Opera was followed by one of the stranger international moments - Apsara, a company purporting to be Swiss, with its lead actress speaking impeccable Spanish in Dolores en La Major, an indifferent show redeemed only by the performances of an excellent local backing band.
At a time when Cuba's relations with Europe were to say the least fragile, it's perhaps not surprising that the continent's representation in the Festival was not of the highest. Portugal's contribution was from a young actor who performed a kind of reverse striptease, starting nude and dressing himself as he recited a few thoughts on the meaning of life, a blessedly short performance which nevertheless half emptied the theatre of the Fine Art Museum while it played. In these circumstances, it's pleasing to report on a couple of UK-related initiatives beyond the festival: the Royal Court has been conducting a very popular workshop with local writers and actors, the fruits of which may be seen in London next spring, while Danzabiertas, probably Cuba's leading contemporary dance company, are at the time of writing in the middle of a tour of Wales with their award-winning Chorus Perpetuus, which I saw in rehearsal in Havana.
This is a fascinating piece, notable for the fact that its six talented
dancers also sing a capella throughout. The three-man, three woman
group spend much of the hour-long work bound together at the wrist, and
their manoeuvres to break free make for not only some very creative movement
but also one of the few, heavily veiled pieces of political comment
that I saw in this very full week.
IH
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ANYTHING GOES transfer of the NT revival of musical by Cole Porter; original book by P G Wodehouse & Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse; new book by Timothy Crouse & John Weidman |
T R Drury Lane |
7 Oct | 1342 | |
B IS FOR BLACK play by Courttia Newland (Post Office Theatre) |
Oval House |
2 Oct | 18 Oct | 1351 |
BLOOD play by Lars Noren translated by Maja Zade |
Royal Court |
25 Sep | 25 Oct | 1317 |
CAMARILLA play by Van Badham |
Old Red Lion |
2 Oct | 25 Oct | 1352 |
DEAD SEX play by Deborah Lavin (Poor But Honest TC) |
White Bear |
7 Oct | 26 Oct | 1351 |
DIDN'T DIE play by Annie Caulfield (Clean Break) |
Arcola |
3 Oct | 18 Oct | 1340 |
THE DOUBLE BASS revival of solo play by Patrick Suskind |
Southwark Playhouse |
1 Oct | 11 Oct | 1314 |
FATALE musical by Mark Akrill (book) John White, Andrew Crookall (music) |
Bridewell |
7 Oct | 25 Oct | 1321 |
THE HAPPINESS COMPARTMENT play by Steven Dykes (NXT Theatre) |
Greenwich Playhouse |
2 Oct | 26 Oct | 1341 |
IDEAS MEN devised by David Woods and Jon Hough (Ridiculusmus - BITE 03) |
The Pit |
1 Oct | 25 Oct | 1329 |
KINGS OF THE ROAD Brian McAverra play |
Greenwich |
30 Sep | 4 Oct | 1339 |
LAND OF LIES play by Gerald Moon and Hugh Janes |
Cockpit |
30 Sep | 11 Oct | 1323 |
LIFE IS RHYTHM The Camut Band |
Lyric |
6 Oct | 22 Oct | 1347 |
MASKS play by PACCA's Writers Group |
Oval House |
1 Oct | 18 Oct | 1351 |
THE MATHS TUTOR play by Clare McIntyre |
Hampstead |
29 Sep | 25 Oct | 1324 |
OEDIPUS Sophocles revival in David Stuttard adaptation (Actors of Dionysus) |
Cockpit |
3 Oct | 18 Oct | 1352 |
PERICLES revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Lyric Hammersmith |
24 Sep | 18 Oct | 1310 |
ROMEO AND JULIET revival of the play by William Shakespeare (Theater Vesturport) |
Young Vic |
1 Oct | 8 Nov | 1331 |
SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY Ronald Harwood version of Francis Veber's Diner de Cons |
Albery |
2 Oct | 1334 | |
SINGULAR WOMEN revival of four short plays by Stewart Permutt |
Kings Head |
25 Sep | 9 Nov | 1323 |
SQUINT play by Tony Craze |
Chelsea |
25 Sep | 18 Oct | 1328 |
STATIC play by Ben Glanfield (Two's Company) |
Union SE1 |
2 Oct | 18 Oct | 1323 |
TWELFTH NIGHT revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Shakespeares Globe |
2 Oct | 12 Oct | 695 |
THE WILDEBEEST LOUNGE: Disappearing Act by Neil McCarthy/The Pandora Effect by Gary Carter |
Drill Hall 2 |
1 Oct | 19 Oct | 1341 |
WOYZECK revival of the play by Georg Buchner in a version by Adrian Jackson (Cardboard Citizens) |
Riverside |
2 Oct | 11 Oct | 1350 |
WRONG PLACE play by Mark Norfolk |
Soho |
7 Oct | 25 Oct | 1349 |
Regions |
||||
APOCALYPSE devised and performed by Mark O'Keeffe |
CCA, Glasgow |
8 Oct | 9 Oct | 1363 |
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Bristol Old Vic |
7 Oct | 25 Oct | 1361 |
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE revival of the play by Terrence McNally |
N Edinburgh Arts Centre/tour |
23 Sep | 23 Sep | 1364 |
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III revival of the play by Alan Bennett |
Quarry, West Yorks |
24 Sep | 18 Oct | 1352 |
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Crucible, Sheffield |
30 Sep | 1 Nov | 1354 |
QUIETLY MAKING NOISE: two plays by Robert Holman; ACROSS OKA/RAFTS AND DREAMS |
R Exchange Studio, Manchester |
6 Oct | 18 Oct | 1360 |
TONIGHT THEY'RE GOING TO BE musical play by Stuart Thomas |
Byre, St Andrews/tour |
3 Oct | 4 Oct | 1363 |
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE revival of the play by Arthur Miller |
Birmingham Rep |
30 Sep | 18 Oct | 1359 |
THE VOICES written by Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment) |
Tramway, Glasgow |
27Sep | 27 Sep | 1364 |
THE WHITE CROW (Eichmann in Jerusalem) play by Donald Freed |
Mercury Studio, Colchester |
6 Oct | 11 Oct | 1362 |