Issue 03 - 2005
Prompt Corner 
I thought it was worth reproducing the Times column (Quote of the Fortnight, opposite) in full, not just because it's a useful (albeit 180º diametrically wrong. because 180º diametrically wrong) obituary for one of the last surviving great playwrights of the 20th century, but also because it's such an excellent example of the malign craft of the gadfly columnist (he wrote, in his column).
Note the way Rev. Mullen flits blithely between various bêtes noires, so that by the end he has sneered not just at Arthur Miller but also at the BBC, Brecht, Shaw, Pinter, arguably Rattigan, and certainly at opposition to McCarthyism. which last shot does seem a little extreme. And all in under 400 words, which takes some going. Mind you, Dr Mullen (not to be confused with his near-namesake, the actor and film director) does seem to pride himself on being a gadfly columnist, with a CV stretching back before he moved to his current parish in the City of London, and which presumably qualifies him to pass judgement on a raft of dramatists.
I'm sorry, I'm getting carried away. It's not a matter of people talking about things they know nothing about - otherwise where would most of our conversation go? What vexes me is this approach whereby anything that flits into one's head becomes grist to the argumentative mill. One expects as little of "me-me-me" columnists whose brief is simply to fill space, where the real subject is the writer rather than any particular topic they may apply themselves to; but in areas of greater substance it's surely not unreasonable to look for a little joined-up thinking, a little development of argument, not just headline-grabbing.
Dummy
Here's another example (he wrote, flitting blithely between bêtes noires). One of the local authorities proposing a ban on smoking on public premises is Westminster City Council. Pretty much every West End theatre falls within Westminster's boundaries. When New York City introduced its smoking ban, it included an exemption for smoking onstage; the Republic of Ireland's similar ban includes no such exemption, and Westminster officials have stated that they do not intend to include one either, advising instead that actors can use "dummy cigarettes".
Now, I freely admit to being the kind of nit-picker that gets exercised by the most trivial things in theatre productions: a misplaced vowel in a regional accent, a Russian character crossing themselves Catholic rather than orthodox fashion, or (on Don Carlos's Sheffield première last autumn, in my FT review) Richard Coyle's tights. (That last example just necessitated my rewording the previous sentence to avoid an inadvertent nudge-nudge gag about 2the tiniest things".) But I'm far from the only person who gets irked by the pong of coltsfoot-based herbal cigarettes onstage. When the mixture is used to imitate marijuana, fine; I've been on the receiving end of that mistake myself. But there's something about that particular acrid stench; it carries a lot further, persists a lot longer, and is a lot more unpleasant than the whiff of tobacco itself.
And this is where the absence of serious thinking comes in. I don't think anyone on Westminster council seriously believes that, say, Patrick Stewart lighting up a Lucky Strike rather than a Honeyrose Special in the Apollo during A Life In The Theatre is going to significantly endanger anyone else's health. I very much doubt that anyone has pointed out to them that smell is the sense most intricately bound up with memory, and therefore the one most liable to disrupt the willing suspension of disbelief at the heart of theatre. I think they're, at best, just looking for headlines, or at worst being stupidly doctrinaire.
Demands
And I think such a shared olfactory experience is a matter of dramatic fidelity in a way that, say, drinking real whisky on stage usually isn't. (Although I have a friend who has on several occasions performed James Saunders' short play Triangle, which requires the actor to drink a half-bottle or so of whisky in the space of 40 minutes, with real scotch, and in such intimate surroundings it does make a difference to hear the screw-top seal broken or see the astounded punter next to you offered a slug of the real stuff.) If an actor objects to smoking tobacco onstage, then I think it raises a serious question as to how prepared they are to meet the demands of the role. I don't, for instance, believe that anyone playing the young woman Jill in Peter Shaffer's Equus can justifiably wimp out of the full nudity which both script and dramatic situation demand. I remember several years ago in Irvine Welsh's first purpose-scripted stage play You'll Have Had Your Hole, homosexual rape was portrayed at prurient length whereas hetero coupling happened between scenes and the token woman even completed her undressing beneath the bedcovers. an absurdity which led two of us in the Leeds audience to guffaw out loud, the other (to my immense satisfaction) being Germaine Greer.
Modes of undressing, in scenes of supposed intimacy and privacy, matter, and need to be thoughtfully staged rather than slyly circumvented. Smoking onstage matters, because it's something that communicates itself to almost all of us in that space, although not enough to seep into our clothes and our lungs. Suatained and rational thought matters, because without it we get supposedly intelligent people proposing dummy cigarettes or arguing that the House Un-American Activities Committee was a good thing because Arthur Miller opposed it.
(If it helps, consider the foregoing as a conceptual tribute to the other sad cultural loss of recent weeks, the late Dr Hunter S Thompson. I was somewhere around the David Mamet show when the drugs began to take hold.)
Hashed
And keeping some kind of vaguely consistent idea of character matters, because otherwise you get a package of contradictions like Bo Beaumont/Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques. Part of the trouble is that Victoria Wood's TV soap spoof growed like Topsy from its original incarnation as a series of three-minute TV sketches. (Mind you, similar origins haven't impeded The Simpsons from maintaining narrative and character consistency.) So, for instance, the dreadful acting and hashed exits of Mrs Overall were established well before the extra layer of Bo Beaumont, the actress who supposedly plays here, and a vain old luvvie into the bargain. Bo is, however, not nearly as decrepit as Mrs O, and therefore all these foul-ups make no sense if one considers that it's Bo who's responsible for them, and even less if we're supposed to believe that she's acting them.
Is this another example of Shuttleworth getting hung up on minutiae? I don't think so; I think it's an emblem of the fundamental problem with this three-hour show as a whole, which is that everything, but everything, is subordinated to the momentary gag. Neither Bo Beaumont nor Mrs Overall would use the F-word, never mind sing it; but, for the sake of an Ozzy Osbourne gag, in it goes, several times. Wood fills the latter part of the second act with a number of diverse musical genre parodies just to show that she can do them and get laughs for them, irrespective of what if any sense they make for the show or even whether or not they just hold matters up. (There's a joke at one point that Acorn Antiques is shorter and funnier than Blood Brothers; funnier, probably, but shorter, certainly not. And someone really should have checked.) We see three separate versions of the show; again, more scope for gags, much less for coherence. If this is simply an opportunity to see beloved characters and performers in the flesh and applaud them (one hell of a lot: on press night, Walters alone got over a dozen spontaneous ovations, which is going it a bit even for a papered house), then fine; but if it wants to be looked at as a stage musical, then it's frankly a ragbag.
Over-exposure
To return for a moment to heroic bulwarks against the Red Menace: I'd always thought it was J Edgar Hoover, but it seems it was actually Ian Fleming in Goldfinger, who coined the maxim "Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action." Alternatively, looked at mathematically, three bearings are sufficient to plot a point's position on a plane surface. And now, at the Old Vic, we have three bearings: Cloaca, a solid if unexceptional production of a play mystifyingly selected for over-exposure on the Vic's stage; Cinderella, a fine central performance in a show which tried too hard and thus missed the real point; and now National Anthems, for which by and large see under Cloaca. Where that was a slight Dutch play which didn't travel well, National Anthems is also less substantial than the management seems to have believed, and moreover hasn't aged well; it was already over 20 years after its first conception when Dennis McIntyre's play was premièred, and now it's almost as long again since that time in the 1980s whose greed-is-good materialism the play fingers in its particular twist on another '80s genre (although principally a cinematic one), the "yuppie nightmare".
It's notable that Spacey's position remains at least as much the story as the play itself: of the first ten reviews reprinted in this issue, eight mention Spacey in the first sentence, a ninth in the first line, and the tenth is Quentin Letts on a hobby-horse. I wrote at the time of Cloaca that we do want to be welcoming to Spacey, who (as Lloyd Evans notes) doesn't after all have to be here, but this season really isn't doing anything to make it easy.
Resonating
Still, let me end on an unambiguously positive note. In the last issue I wrote that, despite being a great big morbid old Hector, I felt no emotional engagement at the death and bereavement in Complicité's A Minute Too Late. Quite the reverse is true of Laura Wade's Colder Than Here. It contained no similarities of circumstance whatever to my own losses, and yet I found it resonating deeply and richly, even setting my mind at rest on some specific matters. yet doing so in a way that didn't allow me to get wrapped up in myself, but kept me wrapped up in the family on the stage. Alone among the reviewers reproduced here, Matthew Sweet holds out against its understated power. (I was almost as impressed, until its final phase, by Winsome Pinnock's One Under, about which opinion is much more diverse; however, I won't go into that in detail, since I have a review in the pipeline elsewhere which may yet appear in a subsequent issue of Theatre Record.) And I continue to live in hope of one day, just for the hell of it, seeing Michael Pennington share a stage with his namesake, who's better known as comedian and actor Johnny Vegas.
Ian Shuttleworth : ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
So farewell, Arthur Miller. The chronicler of the American dream had far more exposure (and some very fine productions) in Britain in recent years than in his own USA, many of them thanks to David Thacker's loving direction. For me the key to his work was the question asked time and time again by his plays and enunciated in the autumnal masterpiece Broken Glass: "How are we to live?" As fully as possible, and with total commitment to our fellow human beings, is the answer I derive from Miller's work - and life. In this light, there is a real-life irony, especially for admirers (few of them, but count me in) of his late sex farce, The Ride Down Mt Morgan, in the news that Mr Miller's girlfriend of two years' standing was summarily thrown out of the playwright's farm by his daughter and her husband, the morally incorruptible Daniel Day Lewis.
Audience-grabbing
Meanwhile, back at the coal face, my fortnight had quite a Spanish tinge. Amid all the praise for the RSC's Golden Age season, now boldly transferred to the Playhouse, and the Sheffield Don Carlos, equally boldly arriving on Shaftesbury Avenue, I would raise just a couple of very tiny objections. But first the praise: it was a marvellous idea of Laurence Boswell's to persuade his masters to give him the Swan as a summer home for a clutch of Spanish classics. He will have been able to point to his own excellent track record in this field at the Gate, but even he must have been surprised at its success in Stratford, and more so when the RSC themselves took on the Playhouse for a London season. No gloriously foolhardy financial support from the angelic duo of Holt and Kenwright this time, just the RSC itself showing some new-found and very welcome confidence. Not quite enough confidence to include the season's one tragedy, Tamar's Revenge, but there you go.
As well as Boswell himself, the Golden Age company had the benefit of being directed by two of the country's greatest yet least-sung directors, Nancy Meckler and Mike Alfreds. However, I saw House Of Desires, and I must say that I was shocked by its tone, and would never have recognised the careful hand of Ms Meckler in it. Here, look, it seemed to be saying, this is a play by a seventeenth-century Mexican nun. You can't possibly expect us to take it seriously, can you? So a tale of honour and intrigue, full of genuine piety and endangered virtue, becomes an elaborate hommage to another former occupant of the Playhouse, Mr Ray Cooney. You have to pay tribute to the company for falling in so readily with this insulting concept and carrying it out to the full, and you have to admit that all the audience-grabbing business of such as Simon Trinder (milking the hell out of a drag scene that was almost pure panto) is there in the printed version of Catherine Boyle's sometimes awkward translation; but you also have to wonder whether there might not have been enough to be gained from a more trusting approach to the original, which would not have felt the need to do everything in excess. The group of young Americans that went with me to House Of Desires, not very experienced in theatre, thought it a hoot. I was left rather worried.
Top form
I had the same response, albeit in a tiny way, to Don Carlos. First, I'm surprised that so many critics treated it as a discovery or a revelation. There have been several very good revivals of the play, and indeed my favourite remains one directed by Tim Carroll at the Lyric Studio in 1992, in a terrific verse translation by Peter Oswald. I commented at the time on its splendid production values and teamwork, and that is what stands out in Michael Grandage's certainly marvellous current version. Everything fits - Christopher Oram's louring set, Adam Cork's superb sound score with its judicious use of contemporary chant, and magnificent acting under Grandage's gently guiding hand by a cast that was willing to go to Sheffield for the pleasure. What a joy to see Derek Jacobi on top form, completely free of mannerisms and recalling his great Cyrano days, mixing with old stalwarts like Ian Hogg (never better), Una Stubbs (unrecognisable and brilliant) and Peter Eyre (almost stealing the show as the blind Inquisitor) alongside newer talents including Claire Price (already an RSC Eboli), Richard Coyle and Elliot Cowan. It's silly to make a list - the whole point is that young and old act so magnificently together. Like Declan Donnellan, Grandage has the ability to make a scratch cast look like a permanent ensemble.
The whole production is unashamedly operatic, closer to Zeffirelli's classic Covent Garden production of the Verdi version (so much so that I rather hoped Mr Grandage would be able to slip in a quick auto-da-fé), and here is that tiny quibble. Paule Constable's lighting is magnificently in tune with the nature of the production: great shafts of light through the apertures high on either side of the stage; backlit entrances upstage centre; a light curtain; even a return to footlights with a row of birdies downstage. All of which says - rather too loudly for my taste - look at me, I'm lighting. And it's emphasised by the complete absence of any attempt to hide the great battery of lanterns employed. It must have looked very different, and I suspect less obtrusive, on the Crucible's thrust stage. It's a while back, but I think I preferred the less demonstrative Lyric Studio lighting - by one Paule Constable.
Patronising
On a smaller scale, I enjoyed the latest from Cartoon de Salvo, The Chaingang Gang, which had a brief season at BAC. This is a lighter piece from a group who don't exactly specialise in heavy stuff, so much so that I'd suggest it's really for young audiences. But they are improving their performance all the time and one can no longer be patronising about our fellow critic, Brian Logan, who holds his own in both physical skills and some neat a capella.
In spite of one or two very favourable reviews, one of which includes the stunningly patronising observation that she can write white parts, there seems to be something missing from Winsome Pinnock's One Under. The idea is great: we are looking at a violent death through the eyes of the very disparate group of people affected by it, and the author is able to make much of their unlikely connections and understandable reactions. Through it all walks the victim, whose motivation is never fully explained - a plus not a minus. But it all becomes rather dogged, and the final relationship revelation is neither useful nor credible. The production was not helped by Matthew Wright's rather splendid Tube station set, since the majority of scenes took place somewhere else; and I fear Jennie Darnell must be held responsible for a sluggishness of pace and general dullness that pulled some cleverly conceived time-shifting and some decent performances down to make a long evening.
Inaccuracy
Last issue I wrote sympathetically about Tim Marriott's Meeting Mary. Here he is again, with Pete 'n' Me, another look at the Cook/Moore relationship that arrives unfortunately close to Terry Johnson's television play. Jonathan Hansler's Pete bears comparison with Rhys Ifans' TV achievement, and there are fine performances from Lisa Hogg and a very cool Bonnie Langford, but it doesn't quite add up. By concentrating on one evening, Marriott avoids many of the accusations of inaccuracy that those of us who were around at the time would level at the Johnson version; here you have to overcome the idea that one of the stars of a two-man show would have his dressing room to himself for so long on a press night, even one that started unconscionably late. If you can buy that, you are rewarded with a fair dose of Cookish humour, a reasonable amount of self-flagellation and a seduction scene that is beautifully played by Hansler and a wide-eyed Hogg. He's still not quite there, but Tim Marriott is worthy of encouragement (and some mentoring) rather than easy dismissal.
Sheer delight
And finally, I spent successive evenings with the Hall family in two shows from last issue. Brian Clark's new version of his Whose Life Is It Anyway? takes in the latest legal and medical thinking, a reminder that the right to take your own life seems much less of a remote possibility than when it was first written. It also includes rather a lot of four-letter swearing, largely from Kim Cattrall, a reminder of the steady debasement of language on stage and screen during the same period. Sorry to sound so blimpish, but it really isn't necessary. Still, Peter Hall's direction and Lucy Hall's cleverly clinical set, plus of course a very, er, contained performance from Ms Cattrall made this a good, solid evening.
Son Edward Hall is now right up there in my book with Messrs Grandage and Donnellan as a master of ensemble work. His all-male Propeller company make The Winter's Tale an evening of sheer delight, with their director's unerring sense of play showing in such touches as the music from stroked glasses and blown bottles, and its complete, sympathetic control of the play's many social levels.
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ACORN ANTIQUES THE MUSICAL! New musical by Victoria Wood |
Haymarket |
10 Feb |
165 |
|
THE ANDY WARHOL SYNDROME New solo piece by Jenny Eclair |
Riverside |
2 Feb |
20 Feb |
129 |
BAD GIRLS Return of adaptation from Jacqueline Wilson book |
Polka |
5 Feb |
9 Apr |
159 |
COLDER THAN HERE New play by Laura Wade |
Soho |
7 Feb |
26 Feb |
160 |
THE DOG IN THE MANGER Transfer of revival of play by Lope de Vega (RSC) |
Playhouse |
2 Feb |
26 Mar |
122 |
DON CARLOS Transfer of revival of play by Friedrich Schiller, in new version by Mike Poulton |
Gielgud |
3 Feb |
28 Apr |
138 |
ETTA JENKS Revival of play by Mariane Gomard Meyer |
Finborough |
4 Feb |
26 Feb |
146 |
THE FIGHTER New play by Peter Cadwell (i Soar TC) |
Actors' Church |
10 Feb |
26 Feb |
142 |
HOUSE OF DESIRES Transfer of play by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (RSC) |
Playhouse |
1 Feb |
21 Mar |
121 |
A LIFE IN THE THEATRE Revival of play by David Mamet |
Apollo |
2 Feb |
131 |
|
MAN AND BOY Revival of play by Terence Rattigan |
Duchess |
7 Feb |
148 |
|
MARIA STUART Revival of play by Friedrich Schiller (Scary Little Girls) |
Union SE1 |
10 Feb |
6 Mar |
147 |
MISS JULIE Revival of play by August Strindberg (Stone Crabs) |
Greenwich Playhouse |
10 Feb |
6 Mar |
161 |
NATIONAL ANTHEMS
|
Old Vic |
8 Feb |
23 Apr |
153 |
ONE UNDER New play by Winsome Pinnock |
Tricycle |
7 Feb |
5 Mar |
162 |
PETE 'N' ME New play by Tim Marriott |
New End |
4 Feb |
26 Feb |
170 |
THE SMALL THINGS New play by Enda Walsh (Paines Plough This Other England season) |
Chocolate Factory |
3 Feb |
27 Feb |
143 |
TAKE ME AWAY Transfer of new play by Gerald Murphy |
Bush |
10 Feb |
11 Mar |
171 |
TALES FROM MUSLIM LANDS New play by Luqman Ali (Khayaal TC) |
Shakespeare's Globe |
29 Jan |
30 Jan |
172 |
THIS LIME TREE BOWER Revival of play by Conor McPherson (Young Vic Direct Action season) |
Theatre 503 |
9 Feb |
20 Feb |
124 |
THWAK! Physical comedy show by The Umbilical Brothers |
Peacock |
1 Feb |
26 Feb |
130 |
VENICE PRESERVED Revival of play by Thomas Otway |
Arcola |
10 Feb |
5 Mar |
164 |
WHEN FLORENCE MET ISADORA New play by Judith Paris |
Rosemary Branch |
3 Feb |
27 Feb |
128 |
WILD EAST New play by April De Angelis |
Royal Court |
1 Feb |
12 Mar |
125 |
Regions |
||||
BLUE/ORANGE Revival of play by Joe Penhall |
Sheffield, Crucible |
8 Feb |
26 Feb |
176 |
BOILING A FROG New adaptation by Christopher Deans of novel by Christopher Brookmyre (7:84) |
Paisley Arts Centre |
4 Feb |
5 Feb |
182 |
CAN'T PAY? WON'T PAY! Revival of play by Dario Fo |
Derby Playhouse |
3 Feb |
26 Feb |
177 |
CLEO, CAMPING,.EMMANUELLE AND DICK Revival of play by Terry Johnson |
Glasgow, Citizens Main |
4 Feb |
26 Feb |
180 |
DOCTOR FAUSTUS Revival of play by Christopher Marlowe |
Liverpool Playhouse |
8 Feb |
26 Feb |
175 |
KNIVES IN HENS Revival of play by David Harrower |
Glasgow, Tron |
5 Feb |
12 Feb |
181 |
THE LEMON PRINCESS New play by Rachael McGill, from an original idea by Ruth Carney |
Leeds, WYP Courtyard |
10 Feb |
5 Mar |
179 |
LITTLE SWEET THING New play by Roy Williams |
Ipswich, New Wolsey |
8 Feb |
12 Feb |
178 |
THE PILLOWMAN Tour of play by Martin McDonagh (National Theatre) |
Oxford Playhouse |
27 Jan |
5 Feb |
175 |
TOMFOOLERY Revival of musical revue based on the songs of Tom Lehrer |
Edinburgh, King's |
8 Feb |
12 Feb |
183 |