Issue 24 - 2004
Prompt Corner 
Producer Sonia Friedman's plan to change the face of West End press-night routine was finally realised as follows: the reviewers turned up on the official opening night of By The Bog Of Cats, which started at the usual early-press-night hour of 7pm. Not a great deal of radical alteration in evidence, to the naked eye. But look closer, and there still isn't. (Except for the case of Quentin Letts, who affected to take Friedman's desire for something more like a Broadway arrangement as grounds for breaking the embargo on review publication which is, er, a crucial part of said Broadway arrangement.)
Friedman's stated aim was to relieve the pressure on actors of having a show stand or fall in critical terms on a single performance by inviting critics to any one of several preview performances but maintaining the embargo on publication before the official opening night It's been pointed out that, arguably, such a set-up could actually increase actors' uneasiness by making them feel exposed to press judgement for several successive nights rather than getting it over in one go. One suspects that the proposed changes might not have been made out of consideration for actors in general, but for stars in particular - indeed, for overseas stars such as Kim Cattrall in Whose Life Is It Anyway? and Holly Hunter in By The Bog Of Cats.
Playing the accent
And one can almost sympathise. Almost. It's conceivable that Hunter's accent was having a bad night on .Bog Of Cats' opening. Conversely, it's possible that the accent was running in and would have been even more pronounced, so to speak, in preview. I once heard an actor asked what part of Ireland his character in a play came from; before he could answer, a wag interjected, "Most of it, judging by the accent." That holds true here: Hunter's character Hester Swane evidently comes from most of Ireland. Also from a number of regions of Latin America and one or two parts of Sri Lanka. Nor is the point that it's a bad accent per se. Rather, Hunter seemed to be expending so much effort playing the accent that the language of her lines suffered. in fact, less due to duff phonemes than monotonous cadence patterns. For Marina Carr writes with intensity at the best of times. Here, combining a version of Medea with the gloomier strain of Yeatsian Celtic imagery, it's a dense mix; and however physically committed Hunter's performance may be, if she loses the linguistic grounding, it's all for nothing.
A dense mix, but a dramaturgically lumpy one. The Greek and the Irish simply don't blend here. Carr has stuck to the classical Greek template in structuring her play almost entirely as a series of duets. Each pair argue their conflicting cases, then another opposition is set up, and so on; the Act Two wedding scene stands out as being more lively not least because it's the only real ensemble segment in the whole evening. Dominic Cooke directs with half an eye on that Greek formality, and Hildegard Bechtler's stark design does nothing to counter it. However, give such a spare, ritualised performance to Gaelic poeticism and it's all too easy to sound ridiculous. The language needs to take flight, but here it's as earthbound as the dead black swan that Hester's dragging along on her first entrance. As more than one reviewer has noted, the business of the swan, followed by that of the spectral Ghost Fancier, is spitting into the wind of self-parody. And when even an actress of the calibre of Bríd Brennan is called upon to suppress her usually audible twang beneath a broth of a cod-Oirish brogue, you know things have gone too far, never mind forcing her to dress and behave like the kind of character you'd find used for a throwaway gag in Blackadder. None of these flaws - the accents, the static staging, the Hiberno-Hellenic conflict of dramatic register - is disastrous in itself, but they mount up, and the production really can't survive their aggregation.
Febrile
Peter Whelan's The Earthly Paradise falls prey to a similar kind of accumulation of weaknesses. The (narratively and logically) clunky memory-play structure would not be fatal if the central love-triangle plot were played out in external events rather than in the various parties' peculiar flavours of angst. Like my FT foreman Alastair Macaulay, I am a committed fan of Alan Cox - in my case, ever since I saw him in 1997, in a brave 29-hour battle against mental and physical meltdown in the central role of the first modern-times revival of Neil Oram's The Warp, in which Cox was playing the protagonist who appears in virtually every scene of the ten-play cycle. Here, the character of Dante Gabriel Rossetti is of a kind whose wry elements Cox can pitch beautifully as a matter of course, but which gives him little substantial help in finding an uninterrupted through line for his portrayal. Nigel Lindsay's William Morris is endearingly blundering, but somehow not quite enough so. And Saffron Burrows as Morris's wife (and Rossetti's beloved) Janey is visually a pre-Raphaelite canvas come to life, but really ought to consider the option of delivering one or two of her lines without a nervous, febrile pant to show the stress under which Janey feels herself. Robert Delamere's production is excellent in its sensitivity to the material but, as with much of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's artwork in various media, there's a slightly awkward sense that, to appreciate the full emotional intensity, perhaps you had to be there.
Piquant
Striking a happy emotional medium is likewise an issue with Grand Hotel at the Donmar. Some reviews have considered that Wright and Forrest's musical sells out the astringency of Vicki Baum's novel by allowing happy, or at least momentarily hopeful, endings to a couple of the many plot strands. I'd look at it conversely: that this faintly relenting compromise is the best they could get away with in the circumstances. A wholly unmodulated downbeat conclusion to a musical? No, not even West Side Story, not even Sunset Boulevard. The movie comparison of the latter example is apt, because - albeit that this musical in its original 1958 form anticipated the genre by a decade and more - the form here is effectively that of the 1970s disaster movie, in which the major calamity served simply as a portmanteau into which to pack the stories of various passengers bound for the Airport or folk on the umpteenth floor of The Towering Inferno or whatever. The only difference is that the Grand Hotel in Berlin isn't subjected to flood or bomb attack or the like (although the overdone protest number by the militant shoeshine boys of the lumpenproletariat might feel like such a threat if it weren't so blatant). It's the grind of disappointment or tragedy for one character after another that gives the show its piquant flavour, and Michael Grandage's production does well to maintain this grimness whilst telescoping the whole business into an uninterrupted hour and three-quarters. (Side note: review comments about the breathtaking backdrop mural serve to sort the sheep from the goats. Like others, I would have mistakenly attributed the inspiration to George Grosz, because I too was in error regarding the painting's central figure of Otto Dix's Journalist, the principal giveaway as regards graphical sources.)
Unfashionable
Period can be a tricky thing to deal with directorially, especially when it's almost but not quite close enough to the present to get away with signalling few significant differences. This is the problem which bedevils a number of aspects of Thea Sharrock's revival of Blithe Spirit, now at the Savoy. Aden Gillett's behaviour as Charles Condomine is plausibly natural from a contemporary point of view in his response to being haunted by first one wife then both, but it lacks the brittle Cowardian poise from which much of the comedy derives. Similarly, Amanda Drew is full of feline allure as the ethereal Elvira, but - unfashionable though it may be to point out - her accent marks her down as middle-class in a period and milieu when that was a stratum looked down on rather than up to. Charles might well have had a passionate affair with such an Elvira, but he would never have married her. It's left to Joanna Riding's Ruth to show both her co-stars the territory they should be inhabiting. As for Penelope Keith's Madame Arcati, yes, she's pretty much exactly as one would expect; consequently, I and my neighbour on press night, playwright Tim Fountain, found ourselves compulsively imagining the elderly medium being played not by Keith but by Fountain's H-O-T-B-O-I star Bette Bourne. If Bourne hasn't already essayed the role, he surely must. I'd even sink a quid or two into the production myself, just for the joy of seeing it.
Nothing remains but to point out that, as usual at this time of year, the final two issues of Theatre Record will be printed as a double number four weeks hence rather than in the usual fortnightly routine. In the meantime, I hope the shamefully late appearance of this year's Edinburgh supplement may keep you in reading matter. Compliments of the season.
At the Back
So now we know the winners of the Standard awards and, as the rest of the reviewers sit down with their back numbers of the Record to pick the winners of the Critics' Circle Awards, I can tell you here about this year's Latvian and Bulgarian theatre awards - another stunning Theatre Record exclusive.
Admittedly I thought I was in for something even more spectacular when I accepted an invitation to the "Decade Of Latvian Theatre". Ten years' highlights in one weekend sounded like a bargain, but a translation problem meant that the decade was in fact ten days of performances, half of them (which I didn't see) devoted to children's theatre. Latvia has a population between two and three million, nearly a third of them Russian, and eight principal theatres, so that the idea of presenting ten years' theatre at a go isn't completely far-fetched. As it was, a relatively small number of productions were up for awards. The half-dozen I saw gave at least a snapshot of a very different theatre from ours. Some of you will have seen Peter Stein's beautiful Seagull in Edinburgh last year, and may have noticed from the small print that it was a co-production with the Riga Russian Theatre; the Latvian-Russian version picked up the odd nomination for these awards, but didn't figure among the winners - eat your heart out, Mr Stein.
Site-specific
The big name in Latvian Theatre today is Alvis Hermanis, whose New Riga Theatre is winning praise around the European festivals (and the best director award here) for his two latest productions, After Gogol and Long Life. Both are devised pieces, the former derived from The Lower Depths, the latter constructed from interviews in old people's homes. We were unable to see these, since they were only just back from touring, but we were treated to a sight of Hermanis the actor, as Jean in Mara Kimele's production of Miss Julie. A good example of the site-specific theatre which is all the rage in Latvia at present, the play was presented in one of the theatre's rehearsal rooms, with a stretched acting area about the length of a cricket pitch and, fatally, the width too. To change the sporting image, the audience was forced to watch the interplay of the characters as if they were at Wimbledon, eyes and heads constantly swivelling as Jean served to Julie from a theatrically uncomfortable distance. The actors' absurdly slow, heavily naturalistic delivery spun the performance out from its usual hour and a half to double the length, including interval. The only relief came from a beautifully judged and justly award-winning performance by Agnese Zeltina as a young and sexy Christina.
Ugliest costumes
Some of this site-specificity was the result of the National Theatre being closed for renovation for much of the year. Their company presented its leading contender for awards, a revival of Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, on another ill-advisedly elongated set in a new performance space slightly out of town, the House of Alfred. Woolf was adjudged play of the year, with its George picking up Best Actor, decisions with which I would disagree strongly. At least there was no award for some of the ugliest costumes I have seen in some time.
The other National Theatre show in contention got off to a terrific start. Director Galina Polischuk set Blow Wind, a verse play by the Latvian writer Rainis, himself director of the National in the Twenties, on the theatre's stage, where an audience in traverse watched the actors arrive in day clothes and get changed, rather like a Mnouchkine company, on the square set of Monika Pormale (who also designed Hermanis' two touring shows). Folk musicians provided accompaniment on Jew's harps and bagpipes. Unfortunately, this very stylish production came to a sudden halt after ten minutes, when one of the actors severed a tendon in his hand on a broken bottle and had to be taken to hospital.
After her over-indulgent Miss Julie, Mara Kimele showed her talent better in another Rainis revival, A Little Raven, at the regional theatre in Valmiera,. Again site-specific, this time more effectively so, Kimele's staging took a traditional story of rural honour abused and avenged and turned it into a modern parable of the country's ongoing struggle for independence, an act of apparent literary vandalism of which the author, who was also a major political figure, would probably have approved. He himself appears on stage, wryly observing a procession of abusers from Stalin to Putin and beyond - the last of them draped in the colours of the European Union.
Despair
What is very evident in today's Latvian theatre is a serious concern for their own history and its present day consequences. A highlight of the weekend was the most site-specific of all the productions, a version of Euripides' Troades set on a windswept beach and in the sea that washed it, and featuring not only a large, singing chorus but also a full marching band. Banuta Rubess's Escape From Troy had resonances in the beach itself, where Latvians had waited in terrible conditions for a boat that might take them away as refugees from their oppressors, be it the Nazis or the Soviets, and in the continuing problem of emigration that the country faces, not to mention the more global parallel of régime change. It's possible that we gained a more moving impression than the show's original chilled audience, since what we were watching was a superbly edited outside broadcast from Latvian TV.
Finally, a production seen outside the awards looked at Latvian youth. Andrejs Jarovojs used final year drama students in his fine staging of Vasily Sigarev's Plasticine, and they displayed a remarkable versatility in bringing its scenes of Siberian desolation nearer home, with film backgrounds shot on Riga's housing estates, an uncomfortably fair match for those described by the author. One category surprisingly absent from the Latvian theatre awards is that of best playwright, but I am assured that there are a number of young local writers around who can equal Sigarev in his bitter-sweet evocations of urban despair.
Similar attitudes in Bulgaria
Immediately afterwards I found myself checking out some very similar attitudes in Bulgaria. A few nights in Plovdiv's Drama Theatre, the oldest of 54 in the country, again presented a picture of a theatre that is alive to current issues, even if choosing classic local plays and contemporary foreign ones to demonstrate it. The Plovdiv theatre annoys its colleagues in Sofia, the capital, by regularly walking away with their country's theatre awards, and its 17-strong permanent company is enjoying particular success under its director, Emil Gonev and his bright young assistant Petar Kaukov. I saw two contrasting productions by Kaukov, the first being Closer To Earth, by the Serbian playwright Zeljko Hubac, which superimposed a racy story of post-Bosnian conflict gangsterism to one set in the aftermath of another war, that between Serbia and Bulgaria in 1885. The subdued, cinematic playing of the actors in this piece contrasted remarkably with their terrific full-out comedy in Kaukov's adaptation of Bai Ganyo, based on stories about the rise to political power (and, in this version, the European Union aspirations) of a Bulgarian cheeky chappie, somewhat reminiscent of the Czech Schweyk. Nikolai Grimov well deserved his best actor award in the title role, though I was less certain about the best actress - and indeed best production - award given to the third show, The Mother-In-Law, an over-the-top expressionist updating by Marius Kirkinski of another Bulgarian favourite, by Anton Strasimirov. What was most heartening was that all three plays were enjoyed hugely by a predominantly young audience. They were played on simple, black-curtained sets which spoke of the difficult economic situation in Bulgarian theatre (which has yet to hear of lighting design as a profession), but the quality of the acting, and in particular Petar Kaukov's clever command of stage space in his direction, more than made up for any primitiveness of technology.
Thrilling and chilling
All this gadding around left me no time for the London productions covered in this issue, with the exception of Gates Of Gold, which I wouldn't have missed for anything. There was something thrilling about seeing a West End cast, led with bravura by William Gaunt, and West End production values (set by Vicki Fifield) on the Finborough stage; thrilling, and also chilling, for this is the likely future fate of many a fine play (and Frank McGuinness's is an exceptionally fine one, looking deeply and with a poet's eye at death and friendship, lies and illusions), as the West End retreats into wall-to-wall musicals and leaves serious new writing to the National, the Royal Court and the fringe. The latest news of reduced state funding suggests it will happen all too soon.
Ian Herbert : ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ANNA IN THE TROPICS New play by Nilo Cruz |
Hampstead |
30 Nov |
8 Jan |
1643 |
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES Adapted by Emma Reeves from the novel by L M Montgomery |
Lilian Baylis |
30 Nov |
8 Jan |
1648 |
BLITHE SPIRIT Revival of play by Noël Coward |
Savoy |
22 Nov |
1 Jan |
1609 |
BREASTSTROKES New solo piece by Stella Duffy |
BAC |
24 Nov |
12 Dec |
1618 |
BY THE BOG OF CATS New play by Marina Carr |
Wyndham's |
1 Dec |
1 Jan |
1625 |
EARTH ANGEL New piece by Catherine Hoffmann |
Southwark Playhouse |
24 Nov |
4 Dec |
1632 |
THE EARTHLY PARADISE New play by Peter Whelan |
Almeida |
24 Nov |
8 Jan |
1619 |
GATES OF GOLD New play by Frank McGuinness |
Finborough |
25 Nov |
18 Dec |
1631 |
A GIRL IN A CAR WITH A MAN New play by Robert Evans |
Royal Court Upstairs |
29 Nov |
18 Dec |
1638 |
GRAND HOTEL Revival of musical by Robert Wright, George Forrest, Maury Yeston |
Donmar |
29 Nov |
12 Feb |
1633 |
HAMLET Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Albery |
23 Nov |
11 Dec |
1612 |
HAPPY CHRISTMAS New play by Paul Birtill |
Pentameters |
23 Nov |
18 Dec |
1646 |
THE IGNORANCE New play by Declan Hill and Stephen Hancocks |
Etcetera |
23 Nov |
12 Dec |
1614 |
MARGARET CHO: STATE OF EMERGENCY Solo comedy show |
New Players |
30 Nov |
1 Jan |
1647 |
NEW SPACES FOR ROLE MODELS Return of solo comedy piece by Julian Fox |
The Pit |
18 Nov |
27 Nov |
1605 |
THE PINK BITS New devised piece |
Riverside |
23 Nov |
11 Dec |
1617 |
ROMEO AND JULIET Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Playhouse |
18 Nov |
1 Jan |
1606 |
THE SOLDIER'S TALE Revival of music theatre piece by Igor Stravinsky and C F Ramuz |
Old Vic |
21 Nov |
21 Nov |
1640 |
TAKE 2 Double-bill of one-act plays written/adapted by Mark Eden |
Jermyn Street |
23 Nov |
11 Dec |
1608 |
US Solo piece by Tim Miller |
Drill Hall |
18 Nov |
27 Nov |
1611 |
Regions |
||||
THE LAST SUPPER New play by Mole Wetherell |
Exeter, Phoenix |
29 Nov |
1 Dec |
1649 |
THROUGH THE WOODS New play by Sarah Woods |
Chichester, Minerva |
24 Nov |
4 Dec |
1649 |
TOAST Revival of play by Richard Bean |
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Live |
16 Nov |
11 Dec |
1649 |