Issue 24 - 2003
Prompt Corner 
Not so long ago I was making excuses for having seen only one of the shows in an issue of TR. Now I've got nine to talk about and only a page to do it in - thanks to the commercial lure of a full-page advert overleaf. (That's the way to silence him - buy advertising).
I'd have liked to spend time musing on just why we go to the theatre. Critics go because they have to, of course. Your average punter goes to be stimulated in some way - mentally, emotionally, spiritually - and not usually to make comparisons with other productions they may have seen, which is best left to anorak-wearing train- or playspotters like myself. So which of the wide selection of mostly straight plays in these pages fits the punter's bill?
Certainly, perhaps surprisingly, Mourning Becomes Electra, in Howard Davies' truly magnificent production. I went to this in anorak mode, having only seen it before in French, ready to make unflattering comparisons with the Oresteia, and like Toby Young (who escapes earlier than me but sleeps less) I stayed to cheer. O'Neill offers his characters less complex motivation than Aeschylus, which gives the excellent Helen Mirren's Clytemnestra-clone the short straw in making her less forgivable; on the other hand, her children have much more complex characters, and Eve Best and Paul Hilton unfold them with inexorable brilliance. They are backed by a fine supporting cast on Bob Crowley's magnificent Tara of a set, which boasts one amazing transformation. My only quibble is with O'Neill's caricature treatment of his black chorus, which not even the great Clarke Peters can keep politically correct.
Richard Bean makes no pretence at political correctness in The God Botherers, which is all the more refreshing for it. As a result, he produces a very sympathetic portrait of the almost insurmountable difficulties faced by aid workers in Africa, just as much as their clients, while keeping his audience vastly entertained. Bean packs an enormous amount of plot, action, character and wicked fun into a short time and a confined Bush space, but William Kerley's neat direction of a fine cast ensures we feel no constraint. Fascinating, too (for anoraks at least) to see David Oyewolo shine in a role totally unlike his equally impressive Henry VI.
The top-flight acting
level is maintained, nay exceeded in Michael Grandage's
intensely special rendering of After Miss Julie.
Anoraks will tell you that Patrick Marber hasn't gone very
far after - much more radical adaptations have masqueraded
as straight Strindberg - and older ones will tell you that
there are historical inconsistencies in his transposition
of the action to the eve of Attlee's post-war
Those who went to the Gate for Under the Curse would have included theatrical trainspotters, for Goethe's take on a rare enough Euripides is rarer even than O'Neill's update of Aeschylus. What we got was a very satisfying evening of real enjoyment, thanks to Dan Farrelly's understated but effective verse translation and some solid performances, with the possible exception of Catherine McCormack's uncomfortably modern, tic-driven Iphigenia.
From here on, it's downhill all the way: there has been praise for Stella Feehily's Duck, which it deserves as a first play. But apart from its ingenious use of a practical bath (revealing as it does that Ruth Negga has a wonderful body as well as great acting talent), it limps away as yet another TV-fodder slice of low life, the Dublin counterpart upstairs to Gary Mitchell's Belfast downstairs. As mere realism it's a step backwards for Max Stafford Clark, whose Out of Joint did enough for bad girls in reviving Andrea Dunbar's Rita, Sue and Bob Too and went on to make serious, disturbing commentary about what produces bad girls in State of Play.
I guess there's more
merit in trying to reproduce film noir than TV grey, and
it must have seemed a great idea to Kirsty Housley and
Dan Hine to try it with Nicholas Blincoe's Cue Deadly.
Daniela Nardini, who played a sultry dual role, is on her
way back to form after her disastrous Camille, but some
way still from full rehabilitation. The reviews will tell
you, pretty emphatically, that the show didn't work, but
at least it was more worth the visit than two half-baked
sitcom derivatives, Take a Chance on Me and Excuses! The
former featured one of the best casts New End has ever
mustered, and they must have spent their time wondering
why they bothered. Roger Hall, who has a good line in the
comedy of middle-aged angst, seems to have been
quite incapable of making up his mind whether he wanted
to write a revue or a play, and finished up with neither.
The Catalans who wrote Excuses! had a clearer idea
of what they were trying to do, and didn't do it. They
(or Gordon Anderson, their adapter) had some very funny
lines, some quite funny situations, and a very competent
cast led by the inestimable Doon McKichan, but nothing
quite joined up in the end product. Soho was full of eager
punters willing it to succeed, but most of them will have
felt cheated. Not nearly so much, it's true, as those who
went to Secret Rapture expecting a well-made, well-played
piece of vintage David Hare, and got a really deadly evening.
That's where it helps to be an anorak: I saw the original,
and that was crap, too - I could have warned you beforehand.
You'd be better off watching football. Indeed, if you were
in Manchester or Aberdeen, you could have watched plays
about football, rather good ones from the sound of it.
Or you could have collected another Medea in Leeds,
if football isn't for you.
Ian Herbert
At the Back
No "At the Back" this issue
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
AFTER MISS JULIE Patrick Marber adaptation from Strindberg |
Donmar |
25 Nov |
7 Feb |
1611 |
ALL FALL AWAY play by Said Sayrafiezadeh |
Latchmere |
20 Nov |
14 Dec |
1608 |
BLOWNUP Metro-Boulot-Dodo |
ICA |
24 Nov |
26 Nov |
1623 |
CAKE play by Sarah Woods (Jade) |
BAC |
19 Nov |
7 Dec |
1600 |
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Courtyard |
27 Nov |
21 Dec |
1621 |
CUE DEADLY written by Nicholas Blincoe |
Riverside |
19 Nov |
6 Dec |
1602 |
THE CUT revival of the play by Mike Cullen |
Barons Court |
25 Nov |
14 Dec |
1616 |
DUCK play by Stella Feehily (Out of Joint) |
Royal Court Upstairs |
27 Nov |
10 Jan |
1636 |
EXCUSES! play by Joel Jordan, Jordi Sanchez, adapted by Gordon Anderson (ATC) |
Soho |
1 Dec |
10 Jan |
1634 |
THE GOD BOTHERERS play by Richard Bean |
Bush |
21 Nov |
20 Dec |
1595 |
JOHNNY SIMPLE play by Nevil Frenkiel and Harold Langshaw |
Pentameters |
25 Nov |
14 Dec |
1623 |
JUMPERS Tom Stoppard revival (NT) |
Piccadilly |
20 Nov |
6 Mar |
1605 |
LIES HAVE BEEN TOLD play by Rod Beacham |
Canal Cafe |
25 Nov |
13 Dec |
1610 |
MESSIAH: Scenes from a Crucifixion revival of the play by Steven Berkoff |
Old Vic |
2 Dec |
3 Jan |
1630 |
MOTHERLAND Mark Sands play (Deafinitely) |
Oval House |
19 Nov |
29 Nov |
1603 |
MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA revival of the trilogy by Eugene O'Neill (NT) |
Lyttelton |
27 Nov |
31 Jan |
1624 |
PENETRATOR revival of play by Anthony Neilson |
Old Red Lion |
19 Nov |
7 Dec |
1601 |
ROSMERSHOLM Terje Tveit adaptation of Ibsen (Dale T C) |
Rosemary Branch |
19 Nov |
10 Dec |
1594 |
A ROYAL WELCOME readings to mark the visit of George W Bush |
Royal court |
19 Nov |
19 Nov |
1593 |
THE SECRET RAPTURE David Hare revival |
Lyric |
26 Nov |
1617 |
|
SISTER MARY McARTHUR solo performance by Tim McArthur |
Jermyn Street |
24 Nov |
29 Nov |
1597 |
TAKE A CHANCE ON ME play by Roger Hall |
New End |
19 Nov |
20 Dec |
1604 |
A TASTE FOR MANGOES Jatinder Verma play (Tara Arts) |
Wilton's |
20 Nov |
7 Dec |
1609 |
UNDER THE CURSE J W von Goethe after Euripides (Iphigenia in Tauris), translated by Dan Farrelly |
Gate |
26 Nov |
13 Dec |
1622 |
A VERSE AND A CHORUS play by Matthew David Scott; |
Hen & Chickens |
25 Nov |
13 Dec |
1616 |
Regions |
||||
AT THE DAWN OF THE 8th DAY devised by Mark Traynor, Neil Francis, Kamal Arafa |
Tramway, Glasgow |
27 Nov |
29 Nov |
1648 |
CAPTAIN OF ENGLAND play by Maurice Bessman |
Contact, Manchester |
24 Nov |
29 Nov |
1640 |
A CHORUS LINE revival of musical by Marvin Hamlisch, James Kirkwood, Nicholas Dante, Edward Kleban |
Crucible, Sheffield |
2 Dec |
24 Jan |
1638 |
MEDEA revival of the play by Euripides, translated by Alistair Elliott |
Courtyard, West Yorks |
19 Nov |
13 Dec |
1644 |
MY SISTER SADIE play by Alan Ayckbourn |
Stephen Joseph, Scarborough |
2 Dec |
3 Jan |
1643 |
NOTHING play by Andrea Hart, from the novel by Henry Green |
Citizens Circle, Glasgow |
27 Nov |
20 Dec |
1646 |
THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI revival of the play by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Philip Breen |
Citizens Stalls, Glasgow |
26 Nov |
20 Dec |
1646 |
WHEN THE DONS WERE KINGS play by Henry Adam |
Lemon Tree, Aberdeen |
27 Nov |
29 Nov |
1649 |