Issue 13 - 2004
Prompt Corner
It's an old question, but none the less perennially valid: where would we be without Shakespeare? In terms of this issue, the answer is "over before we know it". As the frequency of openings begins to tail off for the summer, reviews of plays by the Bard constitute over 20% of this issue - and that's without any of the critics reprinted herein having gone to Highgate to see the production of The Comedy Of Errors praised by Ian Herbert in .At The Back.
Finest
Two of the Shakespeares in question - those constituting Michael Bogdanov's patchy diptych at Ludlow Castle - I've already written about with my Financial Times hat on. So let's cut straight to the chase, and Corin Redgrave in King Lear. Right at the start, I have to 'fess up to some blatant hypocrisy. The remark on the front cover of this issue about Redgrave following in his father's Stratford footsteps makes a decent headline; as part of a review, though, I think it likely to be irrelevant at best. Of those critics who have mentioned the father/son Redgrave succession, I wonder how many actually saw Sir Michael Redgrave's 1953 performance; certainly, none writes of it in any detail, and it's a simple fact that not all of them were even alive at the time. As one who was himself born ten years after that event, all I can say is that Corin Redgrave's is the finest Lear I have seen. After a mere fifteen years in the game, the sample I'm working from may be barely into double figures, but I'm none the less confident in my appraisal.
Nicholas de Jongh is spot on with his succinct characterisation of this Lear as a retired-colonel type. True, too, he has neither the venerability we expect of an 80-year-old Lear nor the majesty we expect to see disintegrating into madness. But that doesn't mean that this Lear does not speak deeply to us, merely that we must listen in an unaccustomed register. Redgrave's Lear has a kind of officers'-mess playfulness to him; he is not domestically tyrannous so much as uncomprehen-dingly brusque. I kept being reminded of the Duke of Edinburgh: those barked laughs and supposed jokes, and the rattled puzzlement when they misfire. Indeed, it's noticeable that this Lear often tries to resort to humour as a surrogate for, or prelude to, outright anger - the kind of peremptory sarcasm or derisive non-jokes with which a commander tries to soften his character, not realising that all they do is reinforce his lack of proper human understanding. Likewise, when he descends into madness, his insanity isn't towering and tempestuous to match the elements out there on the heath, but all too natural: a little edgy and dislocated, and on a human scale. Redgrave does not give us a Lear in the mould of classical tragic heroes; he brings the tragic into our world. Bill Alexander's non-specific 20th-century production locates it close enough to home for us to feel kinship with characters, without reducing it to a level of kitchen-sink contemporaneity.
Clear
Like Stephen Unwin's English Touring Theatre production a couple of
years ago (with Timothy West in the title role), Alexander's is a clear
reading: no earth-shattering revelations, but no patches of opacity either. Without
a high concept to bind an ensemble approach, individual performances
stand out for positive or negative reasons. John Normington's Fool plainly
derives his licence to speak plainly from having spent an age in Lear's
service; the two have an old-friends shorthand of shared humorous references. Pal
Aron's Edgar seems a little adrift at first, but comes into his own in
the Poor Tom disguise, finding an intricate path through the faux-mad
utterances and heartfelt asides. And Louis Hilyer's
In contrast, Matthew Rhys never quite attains the Machiavellian darkness necessary in the role of Edmund, and I'm at a loss to understand how Nicholas de Jongh can so praise Anatol Yusef's Cornwall for plonking leadenly through the metre of the verse and end-stopping his lines with a dogmatic fervour that even Peter Hall might balk at. But this might be a function of my own advancing middle-aged dogmatism: see below. Nevertheless, as regards the wonderful central performance, if I see no finer Lear than Corin Redgrave's in the (hopefully many) years that remain to me, I shall feel no regret on that score.
Invisible
Robert Hewison's review of the Globe Measure For Measure ends with what may seem a cavil; however, seated close to him as I was, I can confirm that the blocking played a large part in ruining the production for us and those around us. Director John Dove evidently believed he had found one of the "hot spots" on the theatre's stage, and kept moving his players to it at crucial moments. But, given the Globe's faithful architecture, it meant that he overlooked the brute necessities of playing to a vista of more than 180 degrees, and significant clumps of us regularly found these moments of greatest tension frustratingly invisible behind one of the broad pillars that support the stage canopy. (I recall several Edinburgh Fringes ago watching a production which, staged as it was with rows of actors facing full front, yet playing to an audience on three sides, afforded me and many others no more than a profile of one actor at a time. I was so irked that afterwards I buttonholed the director and asked whether she'd realised that this was the effect of her blocking; she said yes, and despite it all this was the way she'd decided to stage it. I realised with rare insight that if I were to try to make her appreciate the contempt this showed for her audience in valuing her concept above basic visibility, I'd shortly have been redecorating the venue in arterial red, so I left it at that.)
The main ingredient of Dove's directorial interpretation is summed up by Jonathan Gibbs in his Time Out review: away with much of the modern chin-stroking about Measure For Measure being a "problem play", and back to its old essence as a comedy, even if not the most consistently rib-tickling. Mark Rylance's Duke Vincentio becomes less a morally ambivalent puppet-master and more a slightly nobler, cerebral version of Norman Wisdom, tripping up (figuratively speaking) time and again before the clumsy but allegedly heart-warming resolution. It fits in with the Globe's policy of giving a taste of period authenticity, but it can be very difficult to leave behind the critical baggage the play has amassed. Difficult, and not necessarily desirable. Who's to say the audience is wrong (and Dove wrong to give them the opportunity) to laugh at Angelo's outright sexual assault of Isabella? Well, we are, as reviewers with a broader perspective: we're not entirely caught up in the moment and swept along by the blithe escapism of the staging. However it may have been received when written, for us today the play isn't a bawdy romp, but a tangle of sexual repression and hypocrisy. A production that, for whatever reason, ends up obscuring this dimension from a modern audience is one that's being wilfully perverse.
Glimpses
This "Who's to say.? Me, actually" phenomenon is one of the problems of criticism: having not just the confidence to give one's opinion, but the confidence that it is validly grounded, yet without handing down Olympian pronouncements as routine. (Another memory: a symposium on reviewing, several years ago, in which a precocious student writer of my acquaintance was in the end swatted down by the chairwoman with the incontestable point that she had the experience to know what she was talking about and he didn't; a little later, he turned to me and asked, with an uneasy incredulity, "You don't suppose she's right, do you?" Naming no names, except that of Independent columnist and reviewer Johann Hari.) It's one of those things that age tends to bring; although whether that's a form of wisdom or a hardening of the mental arteries is open to question. After years of pride in my liberalism, I now find myself less and less able to put myself in the place of the illiberal, which is of course itself a form of illiberality.
In my own case, a recent instance of this is my inability to comprehend how people can miss the elliptical heart of Simon Stephens' Country Music. I gasped to read Nicholas de Jongh's review (three mentions in one Prompt Corner: not a campaign, honest, just the way the cards fell), as it seemed to me to espouse a political view largely indistinguishable from the general editorial line of the Evening Standard, which for Nicholas is extraordinary. The damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn't accusation that Stephens is at once "vague" and "obvious" seems to me quite at odds with his actual style of playwriting. Points aren't vague for being not explicitly spelt out. Far from being a bleeding-heart social-worker cop-out, Stephens' portrait of a life ruined by violence and crime is scrupulous in not apportioning blame. We're given glimpses of possible reasons as to why Jamie might have set out on the path he did, without in any way excusing his behaviour. His attempts to edge back into the world he left behind are painful not simply because they're doomed to failure, but because in his secret heart he knows it and realises that this is the result of his own conduct.
There are several oblique sidelights that have little direct bearing on the drama, but increase the poignancy at its margins: for instance, it's possible to infer from a number of isolated passing references that Jamie only taught himself to read and write when in prison, and that his belated appreciation of the value of learning is what lies behind both his discreet horror when his brother speaks of dropping out of college and, later, his pride in his daughter's menial clerical job. There's a great deal unspoken in this play, but nothing missing; and, sentimental though the words may sometimes be when they do come out, they're all the more honest simply for being at last articulated.
Disjunction
Match the adjective to the director: I bet you'd never think of putting "whimsical" next to the name of Katie Mitchell. But so much of her Iphigenia At Aulis at the Lyttelton seems to be composed of odd quirks. She even begins by taking the mickey out of her oft-remarked preference for dim stage lighting: Agamemnon enters, gropes across the darkened stage, trips over some furniture and whispers, "Shit!" Possibly the disjunction arises from trying to reconcile modernity with the 2400-year-old rituals which underpinned the original presentation of Greek theatre. So it's fine and dandy to portray Achilles, for instance, as puffed-up and self-regarding, and to set the action in a half-derelict requisitioned mansion; but try also to maintain the formal elements of choric singing and dancing, and you may end up with the strange kind of backwards ballroom shuffle executed here, which looks more like a parody of Beckett than anything else. It makes the world of the play at once recognisable and yet incomprehensible. Until, that is, the final half-hour, when Hattie Morahan's Iphigenia stops being a cipher and discovers a fatalistic passion in embracing her grim destiny. Mitchell crafts a shocking, potent end to what had too often been an evening of puzzling business and uncertain tone.
Glib Encapsulations 'R' Us: Peter Elkins' Judith Bloom is a more
youthful, 21st-century equivalent of the "adultery in NW3" play. Without
the adultery. Or the NW3.
Ian Shuttleworth
At the Back
When the British Centre of the International Theatre Institute gave its award for Excellence in International Theatre this year to the National Theatre's studio, it was in part a thank you to Sue Higginson for all that she did for new writing from all over the world during her tenure. It was also specific recognition for the work of Philippe Lemoine, who came from the internationally-minded Gate to set up programmes like Channels, which brought a clutch of new French plays, developed in translations by British playwrights, to the Cottesloe two years ago and now offers us readings of four Hungarian plays, three of them bittersweet commentaries on our new post-communist European partner.
Janos Hay's The Stonewatcher (2001) is the first of a tetralogy
of plays developed from his own short stories. Phil Porter's translation
sites this study of a wrecked industrial community in
The joker in the pack is Peter Karpati's The Fourth Gate (2002), a lively collection of traditional Hassidic stories performed with the help of a klezmer band. Akos Nemeth's Car Thieves brings us back to the world of the loser, here a bunch of accident-prone urban criminals large and (mostly) small, whose adventures reel by in a succession of very funny scenes in Che Walker's streetwise translation. Finally, Zoltan Egressy's Portugal (1997), translated by Ryan Craig, mixes town and country with the arrival of Budapest writer Nick, apparently en route for Portugal, in a dead-end village where he wreaks minor havoc on its hopeless inhabitants.
The three plays with contemporary themes are fuelled by enormous amounts
of drink, the one commodity apparently freely available in this weak
economy. Taken together, they are not going to encourage much tourism
to
The Cottesloe event was part of a year-long celebration of the country's culture, Magyar Magic. Another dramatic highlight of this festival was the appearance of Arpad Schilling's Krétakör Theatre at the ICA in his modern adaptation of Molière, Mizanthrope. Schilling is one of the most exciting young directors in Europe, who created a sensation while still a student with a stunning production of Brecht's Baal. He sets his Molière in an extravagantly gay world, whose denizens dress like Elton John on a bad hair day - indeed, a rock group is part of the action, interpolating songs in English to point it up. It's colourful and entertaining, but hardly profound enough to figure as one of Schilling's best works. All the same, it's a sad commentary on our awareness of international theatre that its four-day visit to the ICA attracted so little attention.
Small wonder British producers are so chary of bringing in foreign companies. I
can't imagine anyone being as bold, not to say foolhardy, as the Hellenic
Festival, who invited
One is that most of the second half of the piece is not the continuation of the poem, but another play, The Nietzsche Trilogy, by the German Einar Schleef, showing the philosopher at the end of his life, broken by syphilis and tended in incestuous competition by his mother and sister. It's a far cry from the three actors playing phases of Nietzsche/ Zarathustra who strut the stage in the first part, and the join shows.
The second is that Lupa himself, echoing his master Tadeusz Kantor, is present and visible for much of the evening, facing his actors and accompanying them on drums. It's always been a rule of mine to assume that when you see a director accompanying a show on drums, there must be something seriously wrong with the production. The steady stream of Greeks who left during the evening seemed to confirm this view, but those who stayed cheered loud and long.
There was a very European feel about our own dose of Greek tragedy, Katie Mitchell's staging of Iphigenia At Aulis at the Lyttelton. And I'm afraid I'm not being complimentary - this was one of those look-at-me pieces of direction which drive the orthodox theatregoer to despair. "The whole thing," says the translator, the late, very great Don Taylor, "hangs together as an artistic statement of relentless integrity." Not at the Lyttelton, where a plethora of effects, from Hildegard Bechtler's overweening, actor-cramping corridor set to Gareth Fry's intrusive, insistent soundtrack, overwhelms the cast, and a ludicrous chorus of WI matrons threatens to drown the play completely with their extraneous tangoing, autograph-hunting and shifting of mountains of props - not part of the Taylor version.
Tragedy survives in Bill Alexander's Stratford King Lear, which I leave to the editor to discuss at length. All I would note is Corin Redgrave's curious decision to play the King as a Marcel Marceau figure trying to get out of an invisible box - his arms and hands seldom get more than a foot away from his body as this slightly Prussian ruler shadow-boxes his way to death.
Ironically, I found a far from orthodox take on Shakespeare in a Highgate pub that was more true to the Bard. Stephen Jameson's all-male, ENSA-inspired production of The Comedy Of Errors for Wild Thyme, seen briefly at the Gatehouse en route for Germany, cheekily interpolates a bunch of music-hall numbers, even a sand dance, to great effect, and the coarse but genuine spirit of enjoyment that permeates the company helps them communicate their complicated comic plot with welcome clarity.
From Sam Marlowe's review, you might think Sean Buckley's Matches For Monkeys was a comedy. It's not - it's almost unbearably dark, with none of its characters remotely sane and their circumstances worse even than those of many of the Hungarian deadbeats we met in Channels. Nor is it very well paced or organised - it's not easy to follow the workings of several unbalanced minds in collision. Yet I have to agree with Sam that Buckley is a writer to watch. With guidance, he could be very good.
Finally, a warm welcome to the West End transfer of the Tricycle's Guantánamo. It
attracted a good house even on the hot night of
Ian Herbert
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
BLACK ASPIRINS New play by Darrin Grimwood |
White Bear |
24 Jun |
10 Jul |
835 |
THE COLOUR OF POPPIES Adaptation of novel La femme coquelicot by Noëlle Châtelet |
Jermyn Street |
29 Jun |
17 Jul |
843 |
THE COUNTRY Revival of play by Martin Crimp |
Brockley Jack |
22 Jun |
11 Jul |
830 |
COUNTRY MUSIC New play by Simon Stephens |
Royal Court Upstairs |
28 Jun |
17 Jul |
839 |
DARKNESS IN A WOODEN BELL New play by Yi Man Hui (Lee Man-Hee) |
Greenwich Playhouse |
24 Jun |
4 Jul |
838 |
EPICOENE, or The Silent Woman Revival of play by Ben Jonson |
Courtyard |
29 Jun |
11 Jul |
844 |
EXTREMITIES Revival of play by William Mastrosimone |
Barons Court |
22 Jun |
11 Jul |
842 |
GREED Revival of piece by the Clod Ensemble and John Binias |
BAC |
17 Jun |
11 Jul |
848 |
GUANTANAMO Transfer of verbatim play by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo (from Tricycle p683) |
New Ambassadors |
23 Jun |
1 Jan |
828 |
HOW MANY DUCKS IN STACEY? New play by Tom Gore |
Union SE1 |
29 Jun |
17 Jul |
842 |
IPHIGENIA AT AULIS Revival of play by Euripides |
Lyttelton |
22 Jun |
7 Sep |
821 |
JIMMY New solo piece by Marie Brassard |
The Pit |
23 Jun |
3 Jul |
833 |
JUDITH BLOOM Première of 2002 play by Peter Elkins |
Southwark Playhouse |
23 Jun |
10 Jul |
836 |
MATCHES FOR MONKEYS New play by Sean Buckley |
Chelsea |
24 Jun |
17 Jul |
837 |
MEASURE FOR MEASURE Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Shakespeare's Globe |
30 Jun |
24 Sep |
845 |
MISANTHROPE Adaptation of play by Molière |
ICA |
22 Jun |
24 Jun |
847 |
MY MOTHER'S SOUP New solo piece by Nessim Zohar |
New End |
29 Jun |
24 Jul |
844 |
Regions |
||||
BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL New musical by Laurence O'Keefe, book by Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming |
Leeds, WYP Courtyard |
29 Jun |
17 Jul |
863 |
BILLY LIAR Revival of play by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall |
Richmond |
28 Jun |
3 Jul |
864 |
CYMBELINE Revival of the play by Shakespeare |
Ludlow Castle |
26 Jun |
9 Jul |
859 |
THE DERBY McQUEEN AFFAIR New play by Nick Lane |
York, Theatre Royal Studio |
22 Jun |
10 Jul |
860 |
FLY New play by Katie Douglas |
Liverpool, Everyman |
22 Jun |
10 Jul |
861 |
JUST SO Revision of themusical by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, after Rudyard Kipling |
Chichester Festival Theatre |
17 Jun |
25 Sep |
854 |
KING LEAR Revival of the play by Shakespeare |
Stratford, Royal Shakespeare |
30 Jun |
29 Sep |
849 |
RIDIN' THE NO. 8 New musical by Euan Rose and Laurie Hornsby |
Birmingham Rep |
29 Jun |
17 Jul |
864 |
TWELFTH NIGHT Revival of the play by Shakespeare |
Ludlow Castle |
26 Jun |
10 Jul |
859 |
VINCENT IN BRIXTON Revival of play by Nicholas Wright |
St Andrews, Byre |
25 Jun |
17 Jul |
865 |
WONDERFUL TOWN Revival of the musical by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Green and Adolph Comden |
Hampshire, The Grange |
22 Jun |
30 Jun |
862 |