Issue 12 - 2004
Prompt Corner 
There’s a particular kind of solo theatre that might, for want of a better term, be called “showcase therapy”. You get the whiff of it at shows which may be relatively fluid in their creation and virtuosic in their performance, but seem to have been created either to address an issue personal to the performer – in psychotherapeutic terms, to abreact – or to display said performer’s range of talents... and if both at once, so much the better. I hope it doesn’t seem racist or sexist if I observe that it seems more prevalent among American performers, and female ones at that.
Geraldine Hughes isn’t American, although she’s lived and
worked in California for some years and her show Belfast
Blues was created there. As its title might suggest,
she’s originally a compatriot of mine from
Personal issue
Yet, as the hour and a quarter of Hughes’ show progresses, the principal theme seems to become less the depredations of a West Belfast childhood than the identity crisis fomented by her being cast in one of the child roles in an American TV movie about the Troubles. Yes, it’s all very well to speak of the feeling of dislocation, of being caught between two worlds neither of which quite comprehends the other; but this is surely not an area where the paradox holds true that the more individual a dramatic treatment is, the more universal it can also seem. This is Hughes’ personal issue, and by the end I was left with a strong feeling that she was using the piece to work out her feelings of guilt at betraying her promise to her dying father by leaving her family and going off to university in the US.
And why shouldn’t she work it out this way, as long as the show is polished enough to stand judgement as a piece of theatre in its own right? This may be my issue as much as hers. I think, in my case, it dates back to 1990 or so, and a show on the Edinburgh Fringe entitled The Courtship Of Inanna And Dumuzi. Sold as the oldest written love story in the world, it in fact turned out to be an Israeli guy and an American chick (I feel sure that “chick” is the right term in this context) describing their own relationship, and how they didn’t always understand each other but the sex was good, and interspersing this with snatches (no pun intended) from the ancient Sumerian text, sometimes ponderously rendered along the lines of “Who will plough my vulva?” I got so enraged at having paid good money to see these two people parade their personal problems in front of me that I clean forgot I hadn’t actually paid any money. Nevertheless, ever since then I’ve been dubious about the ethics of charging people to watch you tackle your own issues.
Conflict of interest
There’s a further matter here, though, and one about criticism in general. Although I’m broadly of the same generation and class as Hughes, and went to school a stone’s throw (ha!) from the Divis, it can’t be denied that I had a far easier time of it than her and, crucially, that I come from what the currently fashionable euphemism refers to as “a different cultural tradition”. Or, to use the terminology of my childhood (and with apologies for any unintentional offence), I’m a Prod and she’s a Taig. Now, knowing as you now do that creator and reviewer come from opposite sides of an often all-too-bitter divide, then for all my professions to liberalism and impartiality, and even though I’m avoiding addressing the political element of the show (which is often palpable), to what extent can my opinion of Belfast Blues be trusted?
To put the question in more general terms, at what point does background knowledge relating to a show constitute a conflict of interest, or an outright personal agenda? I remember, as a student, hearing one of this country’s foremost theatre critics (who shall remain nameless) fulminating passionately in a public discussion that it was morally reprehensible to have staged a certain play, on the grounds that its politics were pernicious in an absolute sense. Given that individual’s personal history, I can well understand his holding such an opinion about the play in question; but, even at a time when I had had no serious thoughts of becoming a reviewer myself, it struck me that that might not be the best way to go about the job.
Over the years, of course, I’ve come to appreciate the complexities of the issue. Any critic worthy of the name must be prepared to address broader and deeper issues than staging and dramaturgy. But cases such as the one I’ve alluded to (so frustratingly vaguely!) remain extraordinary, extreme instances. When we bring something of our own to the table, we should be both candid about it and reasonably sure that it will have a general value and validity, not simply advance our own agendas, whether conscious or unwitting. So, with Belfast Blues¸ I ask you to trust to my good faith in saying what I’ve said.
Glib programming
Part of the responsibility, I think, lies with Soho Theatre + Writers’ Centre for a rather glib bit of programming. It looks superficially attractive to pair Belfast Blues with a second-house run of Robert Welch’s Protestants (from the Belfast-based Ransom company that brought us the wonderful Hurricane in the same venue earlier this year): a solo show from either side, as it were. Such claims are not at all explicit on the venue’s part, but the subtext is there, and it’s one that does a disservice to both shows, especially (again, please believe I’m trying not to be influenced by my own upbringing) to Protestants.
The two shows really don’t inhabit the same territory. Where Hughes is being direct and autobiographical, Robert Welch’s play is a self-consciously dense, literary/poetic tour d’horizon of Protestantism, from Martin Luther to a bigoted soccer thug in a Glasgow bar. True, Welch uses Northern Ireland as a primary focus for his impressionistic portrait of an entire strain of belief; but it’s really only in the sense that that’s a location where both the virtues and vices of Protestantism are at their most conspicuous. A number of reviews seem not to have grasped this, and so berate the piece for not doing what it never set out to do. Some folk also seem surprised that Welch’s thesis is that Protestantism is intimately bound up with the notion of protest. Well, duh! Even if the etymology hadn’t tipped them the wink, the press release did say so in as many words, so it ought to have been no great shock to find an explicitly trailed notion actually present in the play. It’s not an unqualified success by any means (personally, I’m mystified as to why actor Paul Hickey makes Martin Luther sound as if he came from central Asia), but it seems to me that it’s had a slightly rawer deal than it deserves, due in part to expectations misdirected by Soho’s programming.
Faint exotica
Having taken up so much of these two pages musing around a pair of relatively minor shows, then, a whistle-stop tour of my own around the half-dozen other offerings I saw during the fortnight. Ian Herbert writes at length in this issue’s ...At The Back about Conor McPherson’s Shining City. I think he’s on the harsh side, although it’s certainly true that McPherson is growing more skilled not at writing plays so much as at mounting his monologues on theatrically plausible armatures, so to speak. It’s also curious that, in general, it seems much easier for English sensibilities to tune into the idiosyncrasies of a southern Irish perspective than of a northern one, whether the latter be Protestant/unionist/loyalist or Catholic/nationalist/republican. There’s a similar sense of faint exotica about the South Africanness of Gregory Doran’s Othello as it arrives in the larger of the two Trafalgar Studios carved out of the former Whitehall Theatre. Sello Maake ka-Ncube has great dignity as the Moor, but it does take a while to attune to his accent, and the recourse to shamanic ritual as Othello sinks deeper into jealous unreason seems gratuitous rather than marking out the otherness of the character. Likewise, chilling though Antony Sher’s Iago is, his malice is driven by a broth of diverse motives, not simply the racism so brutally acted out here. (I’m fairly certain it’s just my imagination that detects in ka-Ncube a faint resemblance to Thabo Mbeki and in Sher’s Iago a rather fainter one to Pik Botha.)
Broad though I like to think my tastes are (it would be unhelpful at this point to call them “catholic”!), I’m fairly conservative as regards outdoor summer fare: as James Fox says in the film Performance, I like a bit of a cavort. It astounds me that after a fair few years in the game, I’ve yet to see a Regent’s Park Midsummer Night’s Dream. Instead, I took in the venue’s Henry IV part 1. Director Alan Strachan is aware that a number of people think similarly in this regard, and so he plays up the comic aspects of the piece, leaving the more serious realm-in-jeopardy side of things to flap around rather limply. This may be partly due to the two young leads. Keith Dunphy is a talented actor who makes some odd choices here as the rebellious Hotspur; I heard someone a few seats along from me ask her companion, “Is he meant to be autistic?”, and Dunphy’s naïve, half-dislocated portrayal can be read that way. As for Jordan Frieda’s Prince Hal, he is a vapid, smiling poster boy for the monarchy, without either embodying the kingly virtues or showing any consciousness of his change of role when he forsakes his roistering tavern companions for the court and the battlefield. Christopher Timothy is first-rate with the rumpled, bogus dignity of Falstaff, and even Christopher Godwin’s lanky astringency as King Henry is strangely appealing; but Strachan never puts his weight behind the play’s status as history, and so in performance it ends up as neither fish nor flesh.
Righteous ire
James Baldwin’s Blues For Mr Charlie follows up Guantánamo (whose West End transfer will be covered next issue) as a Tricycle presentation to kindle righteous ire. Baldwin’s great achievement was to write characters who are often stereotypes when examined individually, but who slot together to provide a complex picture. Its conclusions are unambiguous, but it’s not a monochrome picture of angels and ogres.
I don’t know why I have a hunch that Claudia Shear’s Dirty
Blonde may go the way of all too many other recent
West End shows, into early retirement. It has a more than
honourable New York pedigree, a big name as its subject – Mae
West – and enough of a feelgood air to the show itself,
notwithstanding the obligatory relationship-ese of much
of the modern-day strand of its twin-track narrative. It
seems odd to berate a show about Mae West for not being
big and brash enough. And in any case, given my
recent record on calling West End developments, no doubt
my very apprehension means that it’s guaranteed a respectable
run. Also, after being so disappointed in the first cast
of When Harry Met Sally, it’s a relief to report
that Molly Ringwald and Michael Landes are an altogether
stronger pairing. Landes finds the trick, as Luke Perry
did not, of reconciling Harry’s acerbic dialogue with a
cuddliness of character. And, Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan
though I am, there’s something even more sacrilegious about
watching Alyson Hannigan’s successor as Sally, Ringwald,
the former teen heroine of so many of John Hughes’ 1980s
movies, now grown up, in the flesh and faking an orgasm. Their
twin performances are almost enough to make one want to
spare Ultz’s life for designing such a performance-hostile
set.
Ian Shuttleworth
At the Back
My flirt with FIRT in St Petersburg (last issue) was followed by another jolly if slightly pointless excursion, to the congress of the International Theatre Institute in Tampico, Mexico. I’ve written about this elsewhere (The Stage, June 17), so won’t go over too much of the same ground, except to point out to fans of international theatre among you that the new 2004 edition of The World Of Theatre is out. This edition is not published by Routledge, who made a terrible hash of selling the last two, nor is it edited by me. The latter fact means, to cast false modesty aside, that some of the articles are well nigh impenetrable, having been translated from difficult languages by people without a full command of English or knowledge of theatre; but the former means that this is still one of the best bargains around, because it’s available from ITI headquarters in Paris (www.iti-worldwide.org) at a mere €12. For this you get reviews of the last theatre year in 44 countries, from Argentina to the USA, from contributors who include Peter Hepple of The Stage (England) and Jim O’Quinn of American Theatre (USA). Even more important, perhaps, are the reports from countries whose theatre is little known outside their boundaries, such as Congo or Croatia, Pakistan or Peru.
Frustratingly substandard
Back at home, there was time to visit a varied selection of Fringe minnows and a couple of big fish. The usual adulation has been heaped on Conor McPherson’s latest, Shining City, but for me the play shows many of the irritating faults which have made his work, apart from The Weir, so frustratingly undramatic.
It cannot be denied that McPherson tells great stories: to have him at your fireside on a chill evening, rambling on, would surely be an enormous pleasure. But get his characters on stage, and you begin to see how literary, how one-dimensional they are, and how much of his stagecraft is informed not by the playwright’s craft, but by the short story writer’s trickery. The climax of Shining City is a great coup de guignol, totally theatrical but utterly meretricious, like the twist at the end of an O Henry tale. Before it, we have had the pleasure of a great performance from a great actor, Stanley Townsend, and a valiant one from Michael McElhatton as a man we are supposed to believe can father a child as a priest, suffer from homosexual longings and hold down a job as a therapist almost simultaneously. There’s material for several cheap sensationalist plays there, but for McPherson it’s mere background to a long, characteristic shaggy dog of a story, impeccably told by Townsend. It’s not enough.
Chilly Toronto
The story Jason Hall tells in Eyes Catch Fire at the Finborough is pretty sensational too, but it gives the author a chance to build a powerful set of mother-daughter-sister relationships (can Jason Hall really be a man?) into a tale that switches from the warmth of childhood in colonial Guyana to maturity in a chilly Toronto. Under Daniel Nyman’s carefully paced direction, Hall lets the past cleverly overlap the present, with the central character’s younger self an observer of both, and if the play doesn’t quite achieve a balance between the tensions of the two time periods, it does offer a conclusion almost as chilling as, and much more earned than, that of Shining City.
Far from shatterproof
Another small pleasure at the Finborough was to revisit Michael Gow’s Europe, given as a curtain-raiser to Eyes Catch Fire. I remember being much taken with this short, very touching play when I first saw it years ago in its native Australia. It has worn well, even if the Europe it longingly describes is no longer so politically divided, and it’s surprising that London has had to wait so long to see it. Aussies Richard Grieve and Alex McTavish made the most of its showcase opportunities, with Ms McTavish particularly fetching, essentially European in the role of the capricious actress who breaks a backpacker’s heart, only to find that her own is far from shatterproof.
Lack of rhythm
Less attractive were two shows at up-and-coming venues. I had high hopes of Ben de Wynter’s revival of Gogol’s The Government Inspector at the Union, since this friendly little theatre has developed a good reputation for large-cast shows on its minuscule stage – last year’s The Children’s Hour was a real discovery. De Wynter’s casting was physically masterly, with a wonderful collection of grotesques to delight the eye. Alas, in spite of one or two worthy enough individual performances, the production suffered from a complete lack of rhythm to drive it: potentially side-splitting scenes were ruined by the failure of most of the cast to pick up the baton of comic pace and run with it. Since Khlestakov was the principal culprit, delivering his speeches perfectly well in character but with no sense of urgency or context, the evening quickly bogged itself down, with only some well choreographed scene changes to redeem it.
Fatal vacillation
Good intentions came similarly to grief in Craig Baxter’s The Ministry Of Pleasure at the Latchmere. An ambitious attempt to tell the life of the licentious poet Rochester, which some might have thought to have been adequately tackled already by Stephen Jeffreys in The Libertine, the play suffered from a fatal vacillation between straightforward storytelling and postmodern ironic interpolation. Stuart Mullins’ direction failed to sort this out, and his cuts of an admittedly overlong script served to confuse rather than enlighten. Some underweight acting didn’t help either, though Charlotte Fields lent the right degree of weary sophistication and the totally reliable Robert Gillespie supplied welcome comic relief. All the same, it was good to see the Latchmere offering its space to a large cast, and I’d say it’s well worth Mr Baxter (who has a good track record in TV) going back to work more on a text which has too much life in it at present for its own good. (And yet one longs for more: the actresses who so influenced Rochester and Charles are barely present, the poems not nearly enough explored, the town/country divide too lightly sketched …)
Manicured lawns
And there’s always the Park! Amazing to think that Ian Talbot hasn’t had a go at the Dream in all his ten-year tenure, but not really surprising that he should make so good a job of it now . There were times when the prospect of yet another visit to a Regent’s Park Dream might have daunted even the hardiest critic, but these days one goes with a smile in the step and hope in the heart. Mr Talbot does not disappoint. His is a well organised, uncluttered reading with no particular gimmicks but plenty of sheer narrative sense. The worlds of court, craft and faery collide and combine on Kit Surrey’s manicured lawns and hillocks, all defined as they should be, with an amiable Russ Abbot in his element among a well matched group of mechanicals, and a fine, physical group of young lovers. All that business of who gets what potion in which ear, often confusing, is crystal clear here, with some enjoyable flirting between Puck and the First Fairy to spice it all. On the fine night when I saw it, even the trees conspired to rustle on cue and be still when required – or has Mr Talbot subtly enhanced their sound to complement the effect? The rhythm of the piece was an object lesson, that could well be taken to heart by Messrs de Wynter and Mullins.
At a time when the death of the West End is being announced yet again,
Regent’s Park was full. This time the crisis really is serious, as I
have been assured by a number of distinguished West End producers – even Anything
Goes has dipped into the red these last weeks. But with a refreshingly
multi-ethnic audience packing the Park, standing room only at the Globe,
full houses for When Harry Met Sally and tolerable ones for Oleanna,
we may have to look at the programming, the target audience and the ticket
prices rather than the institution itself. Superficial conclusions are
too easy: why is it, for instance, that Tonight’s The Night is
closing but We Will Rock You marches inexorably on? Are audiences
better judges than critics?
Ian Herbert
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
THE ARAB-ISRAELI COOKBOOK Verbatim drama compiled by Robin Soans |
Gate |
10 Jun |
10 Jul |
777 |
BABY WITH THE BATHWATER Revival of comedy by Christopher Durang |
Old Red Lion |
10 Jun |
3 Jul |
791 |
BELFAST BLUES New solo play by Geraldine Hughes |
Soho |
4 Jun |
3 Jul |
751 |
BIOKHRAPHIA / LOOKING FOR A MISSING EMPLOYEE by Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué |
ICA |
10 Jun |
13 Jun |
790 |
BLUES FOR MR CHARLIE Revival of play by James Baldwin |
Tricycle |
16 Jun |
10 Jul |
787 |
DERREN BROWN: LIVE Illusionist/mentalist |
Palace |
9 Jun |
24 Jun |
793 |
BURLEIGH GRIMES New play by Roger Kirby |
Bridewell |
8 Jun |
3 Jul |
754 |
CIGARETTES AND CHOCOLATE / HANGUP Revival of two plays by Anthony Minghella |
King's Head |
14 Jun |
18 Jul |
792 |
DAMAGES New play by Steve Thompson |
Bush |
4 Jun |
23 Jul |
755 |
DIRTY BLONDE New play by Claudia Shear |
Duke Of York's |
16 Jun |
4 Sep |
781 |
EUROPE New play by Michael Gow |
Finborough |
3 Jun |
26 Jun |
790 |
THE EXCEPTION AND THE RULE / THE NEW TENANT Revival of plays by B Brecht / E Ionesco |
Young Vic |
5 Jun |
12 Jun |
758 |
EYES CATCH FIRE New play by Jason Hall |
Finborough |
3 Jun |
26 Jun |
764 |
THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR Revival of the play by Nikolai Gogol |
Union |
3 Jun |
26 Jun |
776 |
HENRY IV Part 1 Revival of the play by Shakespeare |
Open Air |
7 Jun |
11 Sep |
759 |
HIPPOLYTUS / THE LITTLE YEARS Revival of plays by Euripides and John Mighton respectively |
Orange Tree |
9 Jun |
26 Jun |
768 |
JULIET AND ROMEO New adaptation of Shakespeare |
Etcetera |
10 Jun |
27 Jun |
770 |
MAMMA MIA! Catherine Johnson musical; songs by Benny Johnsson, Bjorn Ulvaeus |
Prince Of Wales |
9 Jun |
1 Jan |
769 |
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Open Air |
11 Jun |
8 Sep |
765 |
THE MINISTRY OF PLEASURE New play by Craig Baxter |
Latchmere |
10 Jun |
27 Jun |
794 |
MY ARM Solo show by Tim Crouch |
BAC |
16 Jun |
11 Jul |
792 |
MY NECK IS THINNER THAN A HAIR New play by The Atlas Group |
ICA |
7 Jun |
8 Jun |
790 |
OTHELLO Revival of the play by Shakespeare |
Trafalgar Studios |
3 Jun |
3 Jul |
745 |
PATATBOEM New play by Peter be Bie |
Riverside |
3 Jun |
19 Jun |
749 |
PROTESTANTS New play by Robert Welch |
Soho |
8 Jun |
3 Jul |
751 |
ROAST BEEF New play by Leah Vitali |
Riverside |
9 Jun |
27 Jun |
780 |
SHINING CITY New play by Conor McPherson |
Royal Court |
9 Jun |
7 Aug |
771 |
WAKING UP SUDDENLY New play by Tess Berry-Hart |
Blue Elephant |
10 Jun |
26 Jun |
748 |
WAR CRIMES FOR THE HOME New adaptation by Leila Borris of novel by Liz Jensen |
Oxford House |
11 Jun |
26 Jun |
790 |
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY Adaptation by Marcy Kahan of film by Nora Ephron; new cast |
T R Haymarket |
15 Jun |
785 |
|
Regions |
||||
ANGELS AMONG THE TREES New play by Jonathan Holloway |
Nottingham Playhouse |
9 Jun |
19 Jun |
805 |
CLOUD NINE Revival of the play by Caryl Churchill |
Sheffield, Crucible |
8 Jun |
19 Jun |
803 |
FLORA, THE RED MENACE Revival of the musical by John Kander & Fred Ebb with David Thomson |
Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum |
8 Jun |
12 Jun |
807 |
ION Revival of the play by Euripides, translated by Mike Poulter |
Colchester, Mercury |
14 Jun |
26 Jun |
806 |
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Revival of the play by Shakespeare |
Derby Playhouse |
3 Jun |
3 Jul |
802 |
PEER GYNT Revival of the play by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by John Harvey |
Aberdeen, Lemon Tree |
10 Jun |
12 Jun |
808 |
TAMAR’S REVENGE Revival of the play by Tirso de Molina, in a new adaptation by James Fenton |
Stratford, Swan |
15 Jun |
2 Oct |
797 |
THREE WOMEN AND A PIANO TUNER New play by Helen Cooper |
Chichester, Minerva |
3 Jun |
3 Jul |
801 |
VODOU NATION New play by Brett Bailey and the RAM Band |
Leeds, WYP Quarry |
7 Jun |
26 Jun |
804 |
ZLATA’S DIARY Adapted by Gerry Mulgrew from the diary of Zlata Filipovic |
Edinburgh, Traverse |
15 Jun |
19 Jun |
807 |