Sub Menu

Other

 

issue 04 - 2005

Prompt Corner

Well, everybody else has had their twopenn'orth on Mercury Fur, so I'm not going to be left out. I don't care that it leaves no space for me to pontificate on the likes of Breathing Corpses (much better than most people say), The Lunatic Queen (much worse: even my own FT review was cut to be more charitable) or Insignificance (another solid piece of directorial work by Sam West, but one which suggests that the real spark in his Sheffield tenure may lie in programming rather than in helming individual productions). This is my space, and I'm going to be monomaniacal. Hey, at least this time the connection with matters theatrical isn't tenuous...

Responses

Miranda Sawyer's column seemed more pertinent as a Quote of the Fortnight than the online interview with author Philip Ridley I mentioned last issue, but I still recommend listening to the streamed audio version of it at www.theatrevoice.com.

There seem to me to be two main issues raised by Ridley's play, and both have as much to do with responses to it as to the play itself. The first aspect is one that I need to approach from a personal perspective, which is this: watching it, I suddenly felt old. Not because of the events portrayed, or because of my own response to them, or because I did or didn't "get" the play... but because of the rest of the audience's response to it. It has been, in effect, the occasion of a possible flip to the

right as regards my stance on the issue of fictional portrayals of extreme material and their possible desensitising effect on their audience, in particular their younger audience.

Ridley has a clear and passionate belief in the (for want of a better term) redemptive value of story, which shows through in numerous instances here as it does in various of his other works. Telling each other stories is how brothers Elliot and Darren manifest their love for each other in a world where more normal expressions thereof have died. Elliot and his gender-bending boygirlfriend Lola reconnect with their feelings for each other by recounting the tale of how they met. Darren more or less seduces newcomer Naz by telling him a drug- and memory-warped story of the JFK assassination. And, of course, the Party Guest's ultimate turn-on involves an entire fantasy narrative about the Vietnam war and torturing a child-Elvis-informer. All of these moments show the value of story to our inner lives — not always to ennobling, but certainly to intensifying effect.

At one remove

Or is it? I'm fumbling a little here, but I think that this faith in the power of story works at one remove from the story itself. As Ridley depicts their effect, the sub-stories recounted are the catalysts for the deepest human emotions which may be otherwise lost or repressed, but they're not in themselves the location of those emotions: they remind characters of their own lives and experiences, but don't excite responses towards the recounted events or figures themselves... whereas, say, the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear seems to me to operate on both those levels at once, as we respond to both the event depicted and to our individual associations with that event.

Indeed, I worry that in order to work in this catalytic way, the stories in Mercury Fur (not unlike some parts of the work of Sarah Kane) in fact require an absence of direct response: that the bigger story of the play as a whole only works if the subordinate tales don't excite such a response in themselves. This is the nub of my sudden qualms about desensitisation. I saw and heard a number of audience members who continued to chuckle not simply through the subsidiary stories but through some of the climactic enacted events as well; and this didn't strike me as wildly aberrant in the circumstances, such that I could write off those people and their responses.

I don't think John Tiffany's staging of the play in traverse is with a view to making us confront our desensitisation. Nor do I think that this is an example of a sophistication in modern, or postmodern, responses to a work, that it can be taken straight and "ironically" at once; I don't think those chuckles, at those points, leave room for arguing that there's a direct response going on at the same time. Ridley seems to think differently in that Theatrevoice interview, he contrasts some vintage anti-critic invective (of which more later) with assertions that younger, less crusty 'n' fusty theatregoers grasp his approach more instinctively.

Narrative

I don't believe that this argument — what Jim Morrison of The Doors once summed up in song as "the men don't know but the little girls understand" — holds true as regards the content of a work. It may have some validity as regards style or form (e.g. the non-linear, physical-energy-based experiences of the likes of Frantic Assembly, whose Steven Hoggett was sitting opposite me at the Chocolate Factory). But Mercury Fur is structurally conventional — it's a linear narrative — so Ridley can only be referring to the actual content. Surely that interpretative ground is much, much more common to us all. We know almost instinctively how narrative drama works, and we surely understand the events in a narrative such as this one in largely the same way as one another. That way may often be figurative, but surely we always perceive narrative firstly as narrative.

It seems to me, therefore, that when Ridley says what he says about understanding his play, all he can be referring to is the aspect of desensitisation... of, if you like, a kind of partial and selective flippancy towards enormities. But how selective, how truly conscious a process, is it? Or how much, on the contrary, is it a subconscious process that has been gradually conditioned in us and is therefore neither as partial nor as intellectually informed as we might like to claim? As events in the play move to a climax, maybe Ridley's point is intended to be that such a one-remove response, such desensitisation, can't be maintained, that you have to enter the tale itself... but I think the audience response rebuts that, and its seeing that response that has worried me. (Indeed, I think even the dedication of the published playscript is problematic: For Rod Hall — I love you so much I could burst into flames". The last line is from one of Elliot and Darren's brotherly rituals in the play, the culmination of an escalating series of declarations such as "I love you so much I could kill you and kill you"; Rod Hall was Ridley's agent. But to couple such a reference to love and violent death with a dedication to a man who was murdered last year in a frenzied knife attack... well, either Ridley didn't make the connection, or he did, and neither option strikes me as especially savoury.)

I desperately don't want to embrace the argument that, for instance, the proliferation of screen violence has a causal relationship to the increase in societal violence. But suddenly it seems to me to be a disquietingly more persuasive case, and repudiating it appears to be more of a matter of faith than hitherto: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And that awareness that the Puritans may have a case makes me feel old, and Tory, and Paul Johnson, and all kinds of things that I don't want to be. But what if they are right?

Fogey

This leads on to the second main strand of "matters arising". This one is more directly related to Miranda Sawyer's quotation. Ridley, on Theatrevoice, is impressively bilious about critics as a whole ("blinder than a bagful of moles"), and also crassly malicious: yes, all very well to laugh about Charlie Spencer tripping over a sofa, but after having been led in through an unaccustomed entrance and directed by flashlight through a labyrinth of passages which turn out to be part of the set, then out on to a main playing area which is in semi-darkness and represents a derelict, ° '. furniture-strewn flat, the odd caught toe doesn't exactly represent egregious myopia, does it? Sawyer puts the matter of alleged fogeyness more succinctly and less pugnaciously: "Where are the theatre critics that speak for me and those like me?"

She both does and doesn't have a point. Where she doesn't is in implying that the problem is generational. Look at the coverage of Mercury Fur in this issue, and you'll see that among its defenders are the mature voices of Carole Woddis, John Peter, Paul Taylor and (though he won't thank me for such a categorisation) Alastair Macaulay; some of those least persuaded, such as Kate Bassett, Matthew Sweet, Brian Logan and (at the upper limit age-wise) myself, are from the same generation as Sawyer. Nor could it be argued that we relative youngsters picked up our fogey manuals on the way in... well, the other three of us may lapse occasionally, but only occasionally, and Brian is surely free from all taint on that score.

Ramifications

But that phrase "relative youngsters" alludes to what will shortly be a serious problem, if it isn't already. We, the bunch of us in our mid-thirties through to early forties, have been plugging away for years, and with the exception of Kate, any of us has yet to land a spot as principal reviewer. The number-ones, meanwhile, have been around now for a fair old time. In his recent public lecture on the history of Theatre Record, my esteemed colleague and predecessor Ian Herbert pointed out that our very first issue in 1981 contained reviews by Michael Billington, Michael Coveney, Nicholas de Jongh, Sheridan Morley and Benedict Nightingale. While Michael B. is the only one still writing for the same publication, the point stands: room is simply not being made for the next generation to come through, in a way that did happen more often for our predecessors.

Don't misinterpret this as advocating mass enforced retirements. It's hardly blameworthy, after all, that these people have written so cogently for so long. I'm just saying that it has, ahem, deleterious ramifications. And it's now having a knock-on effect in that, as we the early-middle-aged await our turn, there are hardly any junior-level openings for those who are younger than us. How many others like Kieron Quirke are getting significant exposure? Precious few. There's a risk that my generation will come to look like Prince Charles, too old and generally too shop-soiled to be seen as palatable successors to our respective thrones when they become available... with the added complication that, in our cases, there are no Prince Williams around for the argument that the crown should skip a generation. In ten to twenty years, there could be a profound crisis in criticism.

Short-termism

Not that that's likely to matter a jot to the editors. Appointments to major theatre review seats in the past year or so have included an eclipsed politico, a parliamentary sketch writer and an Oxford chum of the editor. What these three have in common is not a keen theatrical insight, but that they are names to entice their respective organs' readership. Even the appointment of Sheridan Morley to the Daily Express seems to have been not so much due to his experience and acuity (not to belittle those in any way), but to his simply being Sheridan Morley; I think the way that paper has pratted about with his daily and weekly coverage over the past year bears grim testimony to this view. This kind of short-termism is simply bringing about a situation in which, in years to come, newspaper theatre reviewing's life support system can be switched off with equanimity. And editors will think that they're only being realistic, or even merciful, not acknowledging that it's their negligent treatment that brought about the decline in the first place.

In the meantime, where are the theatre critics that speak for Miranda Sawyer and those like her? We're here, speaking to you in the hope of establishing a dynamic dialogue rather than simply being expected to conform to your own views, which after all you already know. Isn't it more interesting to be challenged occasionally than to agree all the time? Look at those Mercury Fur reviews, and see whether they're merely dismissive or whether they argue their point. Argue back on the same substantive basis. That's what makes it fun. And it'll also, if we're lucky, keep the activity of criticism alive for longer.

Ian Shuttleworth : ian@theatrerecord.com

Back to top

At the Back

Not a lot to report on this time - a fine revival from the Young Vic on tour, a couple of worthy Shakespeares, another dead comic tribute, and a lecture posing as performance theatre. Maybe I should talk first about my adventures as an investor, since the final cheque from Anything Goes arrived last week. You may remember that I moved some of your subscription money into the transfer of the National's hit to Drury Lane. I put it back again before handing over the paper to the other Ian, since I selfishly reckoned my tiny pension mattered more at that point than the Records profits. The show got off to a good financial start, so I decided to put the notional profit back into a couple of other West End shows, the revival of Oleannaand another NT transfer, Democracy.

50% profit

Anything Goes opened, after previews, to second reviews just as ecstatic as the original ones, on October 7 2003. It closed on 28 August 2004 to make way for The Producers. On a capitalisation of £1.5 million, it returned a profit of more than 50% over a period which works out at twenty months. Investors got just over 40% of this - my final return was around 22%, rather better than a deposit account and much more fun. ACT, the producers, kept me in touch regularly with the show's financial progress, sending detailed accounts of income and expenditure.

Fiery Angel's revival of Oleanna, co-produced with Out of the Blue and Broadway Partners, ran from 22 April to 17 July. The reviews were mixed, but the show covered its £300,000 capitalisation and made nearly £40,000 profit, say 13% over the eight months they had their non-fiery angels' cash. Oleanna's producers kept 40% of the profits, so investors got back a grand final return of 8% on their money. In terms of cash earned over time, this is not a lot less than what the juicier looking Anything Goes generated. Edward Snape at Fiery Angel also kept his investors well in touch with financial proceedings.

Democracy is another matter. The National Theatre had made the most of it on the South Bank, with a Lyttelton transfer taking the cream off the West End pot before Lee Dean and Michael Codron finally got it to Wyndham's, where it ran from 20 April to 9 October, once again accompanied by rave reviews. With its large cast, it was never going to make anyone's fortune. Final accounts for this £400,000 production were delivered in December and showed a loss of just over 40%, though as a result of some cunning financial ruse I seem to have got back nearly 70% of my investment. I had the impression at the time that I was not being kept nearly so well informed about the progress of this production, but in fact the statements came through regularly enough: what gave that impression was that they were not accompanied by the chatty letters of encouragement that ACT and Fiery Angel offered.

20/20 hindsight

So there you have it. If I had put the same amount into each production, I would be back where I started, ever so slightly out of pocket until you add in the three lots of first night tickets, the parties (Anything Goes celebrated its closing as well as its opening) and the fun of being an angel. I certainly have no regrets about4helping Democracy to a respectable West End run, and I suspect the attitude of most folk who put money into commercial theatre these days is similar to mine - not a quest for easy riches but a desire to support a valuable institution that gives pleasure to many. Of course it would be great to become infinitely rich at the same time, but the chances of this remain small. Theatre investment is not an exact science: would you have been able to predict the success of The Woman in Black? Would you have expected to get your money back from The Woman in White? (A better test of your 20/20 hindsight on musicals would be whether you were prepared to invest in Cats - most seasoned angels were not.) We are also told (though we don't see the kind of full public accountability that Broadway practises) that Seven out of ten West End shows lose money, but, as you see, it's not easy to see which will be the odd three that come through.

If you fancy a bit of the same, you can write to SOLT and ask them to be put on their "angels' list"; you will then get occasional enticing mailings from producers who haven't been able to raise all their capital from their usual backers, asking you for a minimum investment which will probably be £2000 but may in desperate times be as little as £1000. Or you can now join the investment club run by Stage One, formerly the Theatres

Investment Fund. If you look for Stage One on the internet, you'll find an events company with a rather impressive portfolio, from the Millennium Dome to University Challenge; if you google Stageone you get an Israeli investment company; but if you go to www.stageone.uk.com or www.stageoneclub.uk.com you will find a no-frills description of how you can subscribe for £12 and get details of shows that might interest you. The club will charge you £20 for dealing with any punt you make (which can be as little as £300) and keep 10% of any profits that arise from it, but it does provide a cheap thrill for would-be angels.

75% receipts

A word or two of warning: the Theatrenet site which finally guided me to Stage One's site has a little note on producers, which says they are typically looking for 75% receipts on a 39-week run. They are not, and would be mad to do so. The sensible producer will not expect a straight play to run more than three months in today's West End, and the sensible investor will look at what that production can achieve on as little as 40% of the notional box office, because even if the theatre is full it may contain a lot of people on free or at least heavily discounted tickets. This means that when a play really is a hit, it can recover its money very quickly indeed - hence some of those lightning raids by Hollywood stars. It also means that a play which achieves a respectable run of, say, six months, may be losing steadily throughout.

One offer I received as a result of dipping my toes into investment was to take a small share in The Producers. Now that couldn't fail, surely, with its Broadway track record? Not being very rich at the time (and no longer being able to raid your subscriptions), I let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity go by, and watched with interest while Richard Dreyfus dropped out, Nathan Lane got a bad back, and the show won all the Best Musical awards it could. I'm sure it will get its money back in the end, but it may not lay quite the golden eggs it did in New York.

Live 05

Enough of this sordid commerce - what about art? Indeed, what about Live Art? The Chelsea Theatre has taken the bold step of giving over its entire spring season to it, with 17 companies parading their wares over 13 weeks from February to May in Live 05. I doubt whether the Record will actually get to cover any of them, as with BAC's Octoberfest, since they come and go so quickly that few reviewers other than those with a consuming interest in the future can justify going there. I was tipped off about Third Angel, who are back again at the season's end, and duly went along to discover a very nice young man, Alexander Kelly, giving a moderately interesting lecture on time management in Hurrysickness. A few scientific facts, a spot of audience participation in a couple of "experiments", and a few limp gags were hardly enough to transport us into the wilder realms of the imagination. Maybe you will have more luck: still to come are companies (though, like Third Angel, many of them turn out to be solo performers) with enticing names like Glasseyed ("Glimpse into a noxious future..."), Theatre Buddha, the Strange Names Collective ("In Testimonial [they] will be exceedingly nice about everyone..."), the Society of Wonders and (wow) Zephyr in Zanussi. You never know.

2m 2f

Which leaves the Shakespeares. Of all the Macbeths in all of London I had to pick Greg Hicks's: a thoroughly decent reading, beautifully spoken of course, which managed to tell this spine-chilling story without a single frisson - and was surprisingly un-Scottish in view of the many Scots in the cast. Likewise Kaos's Richard III, which gained nothing from Xavier Leret's decision to adapt it for 2m2f, only a lot of embarrassing references to such as "Lady Hastings" and a singular failure to recreate the real bloody thrills Kaos achieved in their Titus Andronicus.

Saddest news of the issue is the early closure of Ying Tong, with which Roy Smiles comes very close to his mentor Terry Johnson in recreating the world of the Goons, giving us both some very credible pastiche Goonery and a darker insight into the troubled mind of Spike Milligan. One can fuss about James Clyde's accent in the lead, but this was the kind of entertainment with bite that the West End needs. Best news - David Lan's thrust stage revival of A Raisin In The Sun is better than ever, and well deserved its standing ovation on press night.

Investment Fund. If you look for Stage One on the internet, you'll find an events company with a rather impressive portfolio, from the Millennium Dome to University Challenge; if you google Stageone you get an Israeli investment company; but if you go to www.stageone.uk.com or www.stageoneclub.uk.com you will find a no-frills description of how you can subscribe for £12 and get details of shows that might interest you. The club will charge you £20 for dealing with any punt you make (which can be as little as £300) and keep 10% of any profits that arise from it, but it does provide a cheap thrill for would-be angels.

Ian Herbert : ian@herbertknott.com

Back to top

Contents / Reviews

London
ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR Revival of play by Alan Ayckbourn	Upstairs at the Gatehouse	25 Feb	2 Apr	238
ADAM BEDE Revival of George Eliot adaptation by Geoffrey Beevers	Orange Tree	18 Feb	2 Apr	218
AFTER INTIMACY New play by Michael Almaz, inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre	Pentameters	17 Feb	19 Mar	236
ALL OF ME New piece by Legs On The Wall	artsdepot	15 Feb	16 Feb	215
THE BIG LIFE Return of new musical by Paul Sirett and Paul Joseph	T R Stratford E15	23 Feb	12 Mar	231
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES New adaptation by Owen McCafferty of teleplay by JP Miller	Donmar Warehouse	22 Feb	2 Apr	225
DISEMBODIED New piece by the David Glass Ensemble	BAC	25 Feb	13 Mar	237
A DREAM PLAY Revival by August Strindberg, tr. Caryl Churchill, adap. Katie Mitchell and the company	Cottesloe	15 Feb	11 May	201
THE FEAST OF THE ANTS New play by Mugensha TC	Theatro Technis	13 Feb	5 Mar	236
FIRE BIRD BALL New piece by Punchdrunk Theatrical Experiences	Offley Works	16 Feb	27 Mar	233
THE FOURTH VIOLIN FROM THE LEFT New piece by Unpacked TC	Arcola	21 Feb	5 Mar	238
I REALLY MUST BE GETTING OFF New play by James Martin Charlton	White Bear	17 Feb	6 Mar	219
LORILEI: A MEDITATION ON LOSS New play by Tom Wright	Old Red Lion	17 Feb	5 Mar	220
LOVERS FROM HELL Transfer of triple-bill of plays by Shaun Levin and Robert Farrar	Oval House	24 Feb	12 Mar	212
MACBETH Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC)	Albery	16 Feb	5 Mar	209
NEVERMORE New play by Luke Redmond	New Wimbledon Studio	22 Feb	5 Mar	230
PEDRO, THE GREAT PRETENDER Première of play by Miguel de Cervantes, tr. Philip Osment (RSC)	Playhouse	17 Feb	12 Mar	213
PLAYING AWAY New play by Chris Sykes	Lilian Baylis	17 Feb	5 Mar	217
SCHLOCK New piece by Uninvited Guests	BAC	15 Feb	20 Feb	215
THE SHY GAS MAN New play by Gill Adams	Southwark Playhouse	15 Feb	5 Mar	238
SMACK New play by Nick Davas	Etcetera	17 Feb	13 Mar	221
STREET TRILOGY: CAR/KID/RAW Revival of three plays by Chris O'Connell (Theatre Absolute)	BAC	16 Feb	5 Mar	216
TYNAN New adaptation by Richard Nelson of the diaries of Kenneth Tynan (RSC)	Arts	21 Feb	26 Mar	222
YING TONG New play by Roy Smiles	New Ambassadors	14 Feb	19 Mar	197
ZONES 2-6 New piece by Bill Aitchison	various	11 Feb	31 Mar	219
Regions
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Revival of play by Shakespeare (Northern Broadsides)	Halifax, Viaduct	23 Feb	26 Feb	242
A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE New piece with text by Renato Gabrielli (Suspect Culture/Il Rossetti)	Glasgow, Tron/touring	22 Feb	26 Feb	251
A DOLL'S HOUSE Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen in a new version by Christopher Hampton	Leeds, WYP Quarry	23 Feb	19 Mar	247
THE GIRL WITH RED HAIR New play by Sharman Macdonald	Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum	19 Feb	12 Mar	249
MARY'S WEDDING Revival of play by Stephen Massicotte	Perth	18 Feb	5 Mar	248
THE ODYSSEY New adaptation by David Farr after Homer	Bristol Old Vic	22 Feb	12 Mar	243
PASSING PLACES Revival of play by Stephen Greenhorn (Borderline TC)	Motherwell Civic Centre/touring	12 Feb	12 Feb	248
PERICLES Revival of play by Shakespeare	Bristol, Tobacco Factory	11 Feb	19 Mar	239
THE REAL THING Revival of play by Tom Stoppard	Manchester, Library	14 Feb	12 Mar	243
SWEET WILLIAM New play by Alan Plater (Northern Broadsides)	Halifax, Viaduct	23 Feb	26 Feb	242
TELSTAR New play by Nick Moran with James Hicks	Guildford, Yvonne Arnaud/touring	21 Feb	26 Feb	241
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA Revival of play by Shakespeare	Mold, Clwyd Theatr Cymru	15 Feb	5 Mar	240

Back to top